


Finding Real

by GrumpyBones



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Banter in lieu of expressing actual emotions, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Everyone is fake coping, Idiots being allowed near a stove, M/M, Misuse of Mariah Carey, Post-Endgame, Showing up 15 minutes late to realizing you've been in love for 80 years with starbucks, morons to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21944113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrumpyBones/pseuds/GrumpyBones
Summary: The half a year, following an Endgame where Steve comes back, where two brats squeeze into one Brooklyn apartment and learn how to breathe in the calm that follows the storm.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 16
Kudos: 101
Collections: Stucky Secret Santa 2019





	Finding Real

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MarvelousMusings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarvelousMusings/gifts).



> This work was prompted by [MarvelousMusings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarvelousMusings/pseuds/MarvelousMusings) as part of the Stucky '19 Secret Santa! I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had whining to my friends about it!

** _The End_ **

There’s the moment that Steve disappears. It’s big and loud and feels like it’s rotting something inside of him. It’s uncontrollable, like a violent storm, and it’s freeing as much as it reminds him of suffocating — that lack of choice. Being handed grief like a court sentence comes with a certain breed of brutality and he tries to simply withstand it, recognizing that inevitability has found him here. Bucky’s face is probably more telling than he’d like but that’s no more within his ability to change, arms slack and eyes unsteady as he tells himself not to hold his breath long after he started to.

Next, there’s silence. The false kind. The type of quiet that’s full of rustling leaves and far off birds and the noises that two people make just by existing. Not real silence, the kind civilians don’t understand. It’s better this way, easier, the sounds of life going on even if his may not. He’s been given worse consolation prizes, if it comes to that.

Bucky’s internal sense of time is still an unshakeable thing no matter how much he’s tried to beat the HYDRA training out of his system, and he can physically feel Sam’s eyes on him as the seconds pass even if he’s too much a coward to meet them. Thankfully, they’re only forced to endure the pause for just over the span of a minute or else something may have had to give.

And then. There’s the moment Steve comes back.

He looks the same — tired and unsure and bursting with an emotion that only Bucky would be able to guess is anxious. Donning clothes more casual than the ones he left in, though every hair is still in place, just slightly longer. His eyes seem to meet Bucky’s by accident over Sam’s shoulder as the guy handles the moment with his usual tact, a hearty laugh and a, “Thought we may have lost you there, Cap!” that coincides with a clapping hug which slaps so hard that it echoes.

Bucky just stands there, numbly, watching as Steve’s irises continue to dance, almost skittishly. He wants to ask whether Steve’s still in processing mode or whether he’s worried about where his eyes would anchor, if he let them find port.

He wants to ask if Steve is already regretting his choice.

Bucky doesn’t say _anything_ while Sam finishes with Steve. More laughter, more hugging, and a, “Call me,” from Sam whose underlying tone of concern wars with the upper inflection of what sounds like joy. Real, actual, joy. Sam walks away while flinging a pointed look at Bucky that he doesn’t know Sam well enough yet to fully interpret, though they’re twice as close as they’d need to be to know it’s a warning.

They’re already in motion when Bucky does find his tongue, dry and thick in his mouth, as he asks, “How long did you stay?”

Steve looks surprised, the honest kind, the one that takes over his whole face. From the creases in his forehead to the furrowed brows, wide eyes and a mouth that falls slightly open. There’s an actual hitch in his step as his whole torso turns to look at Bucky, shoulders stiff underneath his ‘40s issued button up.

“It’s hard to tell,” Bucky clarifies with a vague wave of his hand towards the whole of Steve. “Don’t know if you’d look much different whether it’d been years or hours.”

The nod that Steve grants back is nothing but a different breed of confused, his face remaining screwed up in almost a cringe as he rights his body, eyes on his feet as they continue to walk.

“Couple of months,” he answers before pausing, as if waiting for Bucky to ask something else.

It’s permission and you’d think he’d want it, considering each point of unease inside of him that longs to be settled. None of it that will be by the question he actually asks. “They at least give you a mop and bucket to clean up that shit show we sent you back with?”

He has no idea what it means that Steve’s whole body seems visibly lighter at the joke, like a solider tossing his pack to the ground once camp has been found. Words seeming to fall from Steve more easily when he offers, “You remember the bureaucratic process, don’t you, Sarge? Takes a thousand meetings to get ten people on the same damn page when politics are involved.”

“And then one more to make sure someone wanders back to stupid again,” Bucky snorts.

Steve’s laughs is more of a hum than anything, sincere and far away at the same time. “Helped them find the plane. Not sure if I should have — but it’s done, either way.”

The force in which he turns to look at Steve misaligns his whole body and Bucky stumbles a bit, nothing more than the tip of his shoe catching over the ground, and yet he knows that he didn’t succeed in hiding it. “That’s good, Steve. No, really, I think that’s good.”

He shouldn’t be surprised, he should know better, to think that Steve won’t hear the, _What if something happens to him? Then who will stop me?_ that’s screaming selfishly inside of him.

The thought is only beginning to seep into him like water into protesting lungs when he’s pulled to a stop. There’s one hand grabbing at his left bicep while another finds his right shoulder, so high the thumb rests above the collar of his shirt, pressing against the sensitive skin of his neck. Steve’s grip is tight and unyielding, digging into his flesh in a way that doesn’t feel right. Bucky still has trouble finding the line between pain and discomfort, still more blurry than it ought to be. Like a lot of things.

His metal arm sends no signals of distress, Steve’s fingers easily the underdog in that fight, and that, Bucky thinks, boils inside of him in a way that may actually hurt. Bucky shakes his head against the thought and he can almost imagine it like a physical thing, the way it shakes loose just to rattle around.

A piece of him that feels _ancient_ still gruffs at the way his gaze has to flick upwards to meet Steve’s, content to strain his eyes in order to not have to tilt his chin. It makes Bucky feel like a petulant child and he doesn’t know why he enjoys it so much. Steve’s not fooled, an eye roll threatening to snap the moment, clearly riding the same feeling of familiarity.

Eyes closed, Bucky tries to figure out how to inhale a sensation, opening them when the ground doesn’t feel right below him, knowing he can’t be falling and yet—

Sometime in the in between, the _pleased_ expression on Steve’s face has bowed back to concern.

“We got you too, Buck. Thought that was a given,” speaking too soft, too deliberately. Staring too hard, too deep. Steve’s expression shrinks back to safer territory as he elaborates, “Well, not you, I guess. I don’t know if it helps at all, but we found him, brought him home. Me and the Commandos. And, uh — other me.”

Everything about the way Steve holds his body reeks of the headache Bucky feels coming on.

Things were clearly intent on remaining complicated.

He forces himself to think, to say something real, and Bucky means it when he says, “I’m happy for him.”

There’s no invitation extended from Steve and no question about it from Bucky as they both seem to decide that they’re leaving together. If anywhere could be home again, it’s always been with Steve in Brooklyn.

* * *

**_November_ **

Steve had been filling his living room with sketchbooks, a new one pulled out from god knows where each time he came home. Bucky hadn’t minded the chaos, even managing to stop himself from cheating and swiping a look despite the fact he hadn’t been expressly forbidden to, respecting that Steve had always been particularly picky about things being _right_ before they were shared.

It’d taken most of puberty for Bucky to let go of the idea that Steve was childishly chasing some sense of perfection in his work. A realization that had come on a mild summer day after the two boys had listened to a neighbor griping about the weeds infesting her flower boxes as they’d sat next door on the stoop of the Barnes’ split level. Later, staring down at a sketch of the detailed dandelion, standing out stark and resilient and beautiful in its own way, against a backdrop of Mrs. Greenwood’s preferred flowers, Bucky had come to a sudden understanding that this was simply the act of Steve settling something inside of himself onto a page, transforming it into a tangible thing.

He had learned to be patient, to live for the reveal, after that.

Didn’t mean Bucky wasn’t dying to know what Steve’s books were being filled with.

Bucky’d caught Steve peeking at him a couple times, pencil in hand, pad in lap, and hadn’t been able to tell if Steve’s eyes were out the window beside him or if he’d been the actual focus of attention. He’d known that his face has been an unruly thing as of late. Unless he was making an intentional effort to curb it, it seemed intent on pinballing between two expressions: the far away his brain always feels and the stern nothing that’d been trained into him as a preset. He can’t imagine that either would make an interesting subject for Steve’s deft fingers to capture, though he’d sat a little stiller, sipping his coffee a tad slower, just incase.

Other times Steve’s eyes hadn’t left the page at all. Bucky tries not to imagine it, the things that must live on within Steve after everything. He lets himself hope that lead on paper possessed some kind of exorcism qualities. And it very well might, Steve’s face often gaining back shades of color by the time he’d put down the pencil for the night.

It’s been two weeks since Steve rode time back to a simpler place. For Bucky, anyways. For Steve it’s been a vague _couple of months_. But for both of them, he’s been back in the now for a grand total of 14 days, 17 hours and a handful of minutes that Bucky won’t admit he’s still counting.

Each second of the shared fortnight feels more like a theft than a gift, something he’s gained without it being given. Each morning of Steve’s awful breakfast — burnt eggs, undercooked bacon, and two crispy slices of actually edible toast — reminds Bucky of the two loaves of bread he’d stolen once as a kid when the Barnes family wallet got down to pennies. The merging of relief and sickening guilt into one. He can remember slipping them under his shirt, warm and scratchy against his skin, cradling them close as a voice in his head scolded, _Is this the version of you that deserves to eat?_

His mother had been too glad to see food to question it, too desperate to make it last that she hadn’t noticed how Bucky had refused to touch it, making due with his small portions of whatever else they managed to scrounge up.

Bucky had stolen a lot of things in Romania, though he’d eaten them then, having decided early on that he’d almost definitely starve if he tried to live off of legally obtained meals alone. The whole smeared memory of that time is so tainted with remorse that it’s hard to pinpoint the exact contribution of one particular source — though he’s nearly sure he’d felt bad for it.

Looking back, he can only say that if the tables were turned, he wouldn’t mind sharing what he had now with someone who had as little as he’d had then, whether it was taken with or without consent.

Only Bucky’s current situation is different. And very much not.

Food is a requirement for survival. Without it, Bucky’s body would no longer have the energy necessary for things like his lungs breathing, his eyes seeing, and his half-working brain cells creating the ever imaginative nightmares that keep him in friendship with the sight of Brooklyn at 3AM.

He needs Steve too, in a much less quantifiable way. All Bucky knows is that without Steve, his lungs would no longer grow sore from laughing, convincing his eyes to open each morning would be a much bigger burden, and there’d be no one to calm his shiver-shaking body back in from the fire escape, putting a window between him and busy sounds of New York as the sun rose.

It’s a need that stretches past the boundary of an obsession that most would mistake it for. Steve isn’t a crutch, isn’t an answer, half the time he may damn well be the problem. There’s no part of Bucky that looks at his friend turned mission turned _this_ and is blinded by some light at the end of the tunnel. Bucky knows — staring at the card magnetted to the fridge over Steve’s left shoulder declaring his date with a shrink — that wherever he wants to go after this, it won’t be in the form of a smooth ride, clutching onto Steve’s waist on the back of his Harley.

It’ll be a war. Like everything else has been. And he’ll be expected to fight it himself.

The fact is, he could do it alone. Could pick up the fragments he’s fallen into one by one without any help from Steve. Mold himself back into something that makes sense again. Maybe even do a good job of it. And, for some odd reason, where that truth should leave a gentle wake of assurances there’s only the crawl of fear. Because if half-put together, all pessimistic, Bucky Barnes thinks that he could shoulder this as a one man job, then full conviction, no excuses, Steve Rogers must have faith too. Which leaves no weight of Bucky’s death sentence welding them together.

Steve is an essential, like coffee. A non-necessity that Bucky thinks he may just croak without on some kind of principle. He’d been stitched in, like a piece of Bucky’s circulatory system, way before Uncle Sam had ever measured either of them for uniforms. But Bucky could, he thinks, reroute the whole thing. He could circumvent Steve’s long standing residence in the map of his bloodstream, if it came to that. He’d walk and talk — even laugh, someday. Only he’s sure that his heart would never beat quite right again.

It matters more that he’s unwilling, past actions be damned, to steal Steve. Certainly if what he's being stolen from is his own happiness. Bucky’s done that enough.

Things were starting to feel like the second before a punch lands.

Which is why, two weeks after Steve returns following the minute that had felt like a lifetime, Bucky ruins their breakfast by stating, “I wasn’t sure you’d come back.”

There’s a beat where Steve finds his footing, then another when he visibly stashes a version of the rug-sweep that Bucky was expecting, something along the lines of, _Sorry to disappoint you,_ that Bucky’s already decided he’ll accept as an answer. The both of them are too tired to fight if Steve insists on taking it there.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he asked instead.

It’s a test, of sorts. A question disguised as another one. Steve wants to know what Bucky’s really asking, and Bucky signs the slip he’s been handed, accepting the blame for it. He’d started the conversation off on the vaguest of footing, intentionally or not, and he’s not about to harass Steve for following his lead.

He corrects their step to match the tempo with a much bolder, “Because you love her,” too aware of the tense he chooses.

“In a way.”

Bucky holds his ground. For once no one can claim that he hasn’t done his part, and Steve must get that, his face scrunching up as if he’d just realized that the milk in his glass had gone sour a few sips in.

“Do you believe in soulmates, Buck?” Steve asks when his expression has settled.

Winding his way to an answer has always been a staple of Steve’s and Bucky’s ready to play the counter, if that’s how this has to go. Willing to be patient, willing to listen, but Bucky’s not touching that question with a ten foot pole — not even for Steve, not without context. It feels sore when he looks at it, like a bruise you can’t seem to stop bumping. He quirks an eyebrow instead of answering, and Steve seems to recognize the physical response for what it is: Unabridged.

“I don’t think we get just one. Or, maybe some people do. But I feel like different people can mean different things to us, serve different purposes, and it can be worth just as much for sharing the title.” A wholly serious ghost of emotion washes over Steve when he ends with a pleading, “I hope you believe that.”

“So she was one.” And once again, Bucky’s not asking.

Steve’s nod is slow, sure but treading carefully. Bucky doesn’t know why, and is thankful for it all the same.

“She — She was always able to see me. I don’t think it mattered, what Erskine did, it would have always been the same with her. They hadn’t even finished designing the suit before she’d thrown _Captain America_ into a footnote in the much longer novel of who I was. And boy, she could read me like a book,” he chuckles.

“Peggy’d look at me and I’d feel understood. It’s a rarer thing than you’d think.” Steve’s voice has sunk low but his eyes are bright, obviously knowing he may as well be telling Bucky what his own middle name is.

“Sounds like you’re too dumb to know a good thing.”

“Maybe,” Steve shrugs. “Just know me and her — we weren’t meant for that. I couldn’t be in love with her, which meant we were as much as we could be. I can only guess what he, what _that_ Steve, will do. But I went back knowing I’d be seeing you — _you_ you soon.”

And then, they wait. For Bucky to ask the obvious _Why?_ or _How can you be so sure?_ but he can’t justify acting a fool. The _‘couldn’t’_ in Steve’s confession could mean a lot of things but Bucky finds fear forming where there should be curiosity.

“You’re always saying you don’t feel right here. I mean, now,” Bucky pushes. “I assumed — I just always assumed,” _that you needed her. To laugh and see and feel at peace._

The smirk on Steve’s face is either proof that he gets it or that he doesn’t at all and Bucky takes a deep breath, knowing he won’t be able to ask again in a plainer way.

“I miss the Dodgers being on the correct coast. Miss how small the world could feel. I wouldn’t mind having a damn clue what anyone is ever talking about,” Steve says with a chuckle that simmers into tempered smile that’s been angled towards the table. “And yeah, I miss her. You don’t get many people like that per lifetime.”

“You could have—”

Their eyes meeting feels like a hand slapping over his mouth, to the point Bucky nearly forgets to shut his jaw. Steve looks, of all things, hurt. Maybe a dash of confused. Though the rest of it sinks, swiftly, back to tired as if it’s in quicksand.

“I’m where I want to be, Buck,” in the tone of finality.

Bucky just nods, an idiotic, “Alright,” rolling off his tongue without permission.

A weight had appeared, centered on his chest, the moment that Steve had volunteered to return the Soul Stone. Bucky’s not sure if it’s gone, not sure something like that ever just leaves, but it may have just cracked into manageable pieces. The _relief_ is unbearable. Too much. Too big. Too dangerous. And he feels lost, trying to quell it into silence.

“What about you?” Steve aks, voice flooding with obvious sarcasm. “Were you looking for a ticket back to the good ole days? I never even asked.”

He misses their old apartment. It was tiny and the neighbors were loud and the hot water was warm on the best of days. But it had felt like home in a way he doesn’t know if this newness can be.

He misses being a no one. Walking down the street and not wondering if anyone knows, if anyone cares, if he’s hurt any of these people in a second-hand way. Anonymous and inconsequential in a more straightforward time.

Bucky isn’t that person anymore, wouldn’t be even if people thought that he was. No matter how well he wore it. He’s forever changed, for better or more likely worse. Going back wouldn’t undo what’s done and he’d grown tired of masks long before Steve ever knocked his off. Grown tired, period.

And he _needs_ Steve.

“I don’t,” he answers once he’s sure he means it. “I don’t want to pretend anymore.”

Steve’s eyes are pleased, his smile uneven like it shot for a smirk, and his kick is soft when it hits Bucky’s shin under the table. His socked toes settle next to Bucky’s with the synthetic material of his sneaker between them, still unable to take them off for longer than a shower. It bothers him enough, knowing that Steve wouldn’t be ready to run if —

He’s where he wants to be too. Even if it means taking a bullet for Steve as the punk holds them up, tying his laces.

“Good,” Steve says, finally getting back to his eggs.

* * *

** _December_ **

They hadn’t really talked about Christmas. Not the _they_ that makes up the nucleus of Bucky’s solar system; though Steve’s acknowledgement ended at dropping a potted two foot tree onto one of the end tables in the living room before tossing a shrug Bucky’s way. But the greater they as well — the world as a whole. Bucky’s not sure if everyone just forgot, understandable with how the fall seemed to slip away after everything, or if the planetary population has simply ruled it unimportant in the wake of what’s happened. Not ready, yet, to face the idea of a hefty pink-faced man demanding cheer.

Snow had been late this year, the first real blizzard not rolling in until the year’s last month, which only meant that when winter finally threw a punch, it’d ended up being a doozy. Double digit snowfall of the horrible wet kind that didn’t compact — no good for anything other than breaking your back if you were unlucky enough to have to shovel it. Bucky’s reaction had angled towards grateful, perhaps needing a warm up lap before facing a full reminder of the snowball fights and snowmen making of days long gone.

Things were crawling towards the idea of feeling real again.

It snows again on Christmas Eve, the slow falling, large-flaked, and fluffy stuff that doesn’t immediately sink into your clothing. The kind that everyone favors.

After everything else, it still amazes Bucky how different the city looks under a foot of white. A clean, new, beautiful New York that’s allowed to exist for a few hours’ span before the tireless world would churn it back to a brown sludgy mess before sunup.

The ice crystals clinging to the metal of the fire escape crackle under their boots as they sipped scalding hot cocoa, marshmallows having been shoved into Bucky’s mug against his will. Steve had been humming along to the tune of Jingle Bells that was playing from a neighboring apartment until he’d caught sight of Bucky’s glare — which is when the singing had started. Or something that _may_ have been classified as singing if the performance had been witnessed behind sound proof glass. His own laughter hadn’t stopped him, and Bucky’s distress was only encouragement, though the song ending finally spoiled Steve’s fun. A newer one picked up where the other left off and they both listened in silence as a woman whose style seemed intent on taking the scenic route kicked off with flair.

 _All I want for Christmas is you…_ Bucky wondered whether it was written as a promise or a plea.

“ _You_ wishing for anything this Christmas?” Steve asks as they watch yet another car barely miss the fire hydrant after having the nerve to attempt taking a right onto their street. Three different times Steve’d run down to throw out some salt but nature was taking lead in the battle.

“Earplugs.”

Steve’s mouth is hidden behind his mug, though the condensation from his breath comes out in a series of huffs that can’t be written off as part of the gentle current of steam the drink is giving off.

“Practical, I admire that,” is all he replies.

“What about Captain America? What’d he ask for this year?”

A different smile comes out, the plastered on one that lines the shelves of cereal aisles all across the country. Shoulders back, chin up, and eyes a tad glassy under too raised to be natural brows. It’s concerning, how quickly Steve can get the Cap out of the box.

“World Peace,” Steve says in a voice not quite his own. Though the corners of his mouth are already cracking when he adds, “And a warm slice of apple pie!”

Bucky snorts. “I don’t know how you get anyone to eat that shit you serve.”

“People will believe anything you say, so long as it’s what they want to hear,” and it’s clearly a struggle for Steve, pretending the truth in the sentiment doesn’t sting.

“Well, then, how about ole Steven Rogers? What’s he hoping to find under the tree come morning?”

But Steve just shrugs again, the light from the frosted street lamp a warm yellow in the center of his eye as he watches the parking ban light blink on and off.

“He’d appreciate it if they’d sew some more room into Captain America’s pants, for one.”

And this time when Bucky snorts it’s a wildly violent thing. So much so that he almost drops his cup, only to nearly crush it when his left hand gets a bit overzealous in righting it. He already looks a mess, brown splotches all down the front of him, and he does his sweater no favors as he wipes at least half the mug’s contents off of where he’s just splashed it all over his face.

It’s worth it, the stains and embarrassment both, for Steve’s ecstatic expression.

“Talk about a long shot,” Bucky says into his sleeve.

“I don’t remember Santa having _easily attainable_ as a gift stipulation.”

“Well, he might not,” Bucky shoots back. “However, I don’t know where you think, in these sweatpants, I’m storing a reindeer. So we’ll carry right along to _your_ wishlist, then,” watching as Steve’s eyes only jump away, staring a little too intently across the way at a building that only boasts dark windows.

“Oh come on,” Bucky pries. “It’s just us, Stevie, and I’m several decades of penancing away from being allowed to judge anyone about anything.”

The responding silence eats at Bucky, Steve’s face walking a delicate line, leaving only hesitation out on display. It looks wrong on him, Steve looking more at home beating down a brick wall than he does in pause. But still, Bucky doesn’t mean it the way it comes out. Pressing and pushing and soft enough to be felt like a physical touch, though he doesn’t try to take it back either when he turns the question into a statement with a, “You must want _something_.”

The look on Steve’s face when their eyes remeet is more of a conversation than it is an emotion and it slams into Bucky like a kick to the chest. The purple under Steve’s eyes has only grown darker the past few months, the serum unable to keep up with the pace he’s trying to run. He’s allowing himself to look exhausted as he holds Bucky’s gaze and Bucky is stupidly thankful for it. The truth is still the truth, no matter how much it hurts, and he’s always wanted the whole of Steve.

There’s a wounded animal at the very center of what Steve’s permitting himself to convey. One that’s trying to decide if crying out will do anything other then call forward the ax. Bucky’d recognize that feeling anywhere.

Steve’s mouth opens, once, then twice, before losing momentum as his eyes trace the path of yet another wayward car. By the time the wheels have righted themselves, Steve’s expression has made strides towards the same, hiding the rest of his answer behind a wall so unconvincing it may as well be a chain link fence. Bucky’s not dumb enough to think it isn’t intentional, the transparency Steve leaves. And it’s a precious gift, even if the only way that Steve can bare honesty right now is to admit that he can’t.

“I wouldn’t say no to a nap,” Steve finally huffs.

“I’m willing to participate in a you versus a frying pan experiment if you’re okay with substituting for a light coma.”

Steve’s chuckle is real, cheeks pushing up into his eyes, and the sound of it is so low you can barely hear it. Not the fake one that pings high as he forces it out, mouth too wide and face exaggeratedly stretched around an insincere smile. This one, the genuine kind, shakes Steve’s whole gigantic frame from his wide shoulders to slim hips, his head shaking as his eyes lift up to the starless sky.

Bucky thinks about saying something. About how weird it is, that they’re here at all. At how strange it feels, when he tries to rectify everything that’s happened into something that reads legibly. At how lucky he is, having a singular consistency in his life, and fate had cast Bucky’s first choice for the role.

“Let’s do presents now,” Steve announces, cutting off Bucky’s choice of admitting to any of it. He feels disappointed, despite what the odds for the sentiments had looked like.

The apartment is a little too warm when he first slips through the window after Steve, not having realized how cold his skin had become. The heat prickles against his frozen cheeks and half-numb hand in a way that he knows will soon feel better, no matter how uncomfortable it is now.

Steve disappears with a comment about Bucky being the red-nosed reindeer all along and a held up finger signalling he’s not to be followed. He returns almost immediately with a binder in hand that he unceremoniously frisbees across the room.

“ _Jesus,_ ” Bucky snaps, even as his hand grabs it out of the air without spilling his mug again. He puts it down, anyway, not trusting that this will be the last thing Steve throws his way.

He stares down at the black cover as he stands in the middle of the room, telling himself that he isn’t waiting for instructions.

He gets them, either way.

“Come here,” Steve says, from his favorite spot in the middle of the couch, his tone rolling between offer and order. With a coy smile, Steve’s ankles cross on the coffee table as his hand lands two loud pats on the cushion to the right of him, the side where there is, of course, less room. And Bucky, of course, complies.

The portfolio is somehow easier to accept as a concept when Steve is pressed against his side, so close that the front cover rests on his thigh when Bucky finally opens it to a drawing of a window.

“It’s —”

“Our apartment,” Bucky completes.

Not _Steve’s_ apartment, not the one they’re currently sitting in, snow from their pants slowly soaking into the blue soft fabric of the couch. But theirs from _then_. Bucky instantly knows which window it is, though perhaps that’s not saying so much — there’d only been two, afterall. It’s the one that was next to the sink, looking out onto Myrtle, where Bucky would stand and watch the trolley go by as he drank his coffee each morning. The corner of Greene Park to the left and the Navy Yard in the distance beyond rows of buildings that had looked so old to him back then. He wonders how many of them are even still standing.

“It’s a lot from memory,” Steve offers like an apology, shuffling against the seat until the inch of height difference between them is eaten by a slouch. “I’m sure I didn’t get it all right.”

Bucky’s finger traces a building through the protective layer of plastic, ready to make a bullshit proclamation that it has the wrong number of floors, but when he meets Steve’s eyes they’re wide and close and the tired has been replaced with something that ranks much higher on Bucky’s list of unwelcomes: Hope.

“Looks good to me.”

It seems to be enough, Steve’s smile returning as Bucky looks back to the page, only to quickly flip it to a sketch of Bucky doing the dishes. His elastic is in the middle of losing the battle to contain his hair, his shirt is Steve’s and therefore a size too big, and his eyes look hazy. The line of his mouth, however, speaks of contentment, as if he had just remembered the punchline of a joke.

“You could of been helping instead,” Bucky tries to scold, voice drifting away from it.

He’s already turning the page while Steve’s, “Sure could of,” is still being spoken, Bucky not quite ready to look at himself just yet.

There’s a portrait of the Commandos that Bucky flips too quickly past, and one of a jar of Nutella that’s titled “The Love of James B. Barnes’ Life” which is left unprotested, bringing them to the sight of Ebbets Field.

“How the hell do _you_ have the patience to draw all this detail?”

“Knowing that proof of capability will just annoy you more is a fantastic motivator,” Steve tells him, smile earnest even as his hand reaches across Bucky’s lap to cover his fingers where they’re wrapped around the edge of the page.

Steve’s voice edges on a pained whisper when he explains, “The next one — it’s of Becca. I won’t be mad, if you want to skip it.”

Bucky nods and thinks about it before grabbing a second page and turning them together to a picture of Sarah, instead, that slaps a grin onto his face where they’d surely just been a frown.

“Now _there’s_ the actual love of my life.”

The groan from Steve almost sounds like a relief. “Don’t start that again.”

“I’m just saying, could have been good for you, having a father figure in your life. If only you’d given me your blessing, son.”

“Yeah — someone around to warn me away from creeps like you could have been a real lifesaver,” Steve sighs, making a shallow attempt at tugging the book away from Bucky.

He tries to fight his own voice, pushing it back towards the playful lightness, though Steve doesn’t seem surprised when Bucky’s tone curls into sincerity when he says, “God, she really was a looker.”

There’s only a hum in response, Steve’s hand going lax to the point he lets go of the book, slipping under the cover to find Bucky’s thigh and give it a squeeze as he continues to stare at Sarah’s beautiful face. A graceful jaw, big kind eyes, an offset smile, and a nose whose best quality was in its imperfections. Steve had looked just like her before. Though here, in the light from the lamp and the twinkling small tree, smelling like chocolate, with the sounds of rumbling plows in the streets below — Bucky’s willing to admit that Steve still does.

“I miss her. I know how that must sound, telling _you_ how much I wish —” but Steve stops him with another flex of his hand, harder this time.

“Me too.”

Bucky allows Steve to take the binder, sliding it away, and closing it before Bucky can work up the nerve to demand that they flip back to Becca’s and truly make a spectacle of himself. With a flick of Steve’s wrist, it lands on the coffee table with a _thwap_ that feels transitional. The small distance loosens the belt that had worked itself around his chest, creating some room for Bucky to breathe within.

He’s appreciative in a way that feels like thunder, lapping at him in deafening waves that would probably shatter him if it came all at once. For the drawings, for the past few years, for Bucky having a home to share _then_ and Steve welcoming him into his own _now_. For the board having been reset — whether he deserves it or not.

“Steve, I —”

But the shake of Steve’s head is a period at the end of his sentence and his eyes are absolution. His smile a turning point.

“You better have gotten me something,” he threatens, though his eyes widen in surprise when Bucky actually gets up to grab it from its poor hiding place in the coat closet.

The paper grocery bag with crumbled newspaper stuffed in as tissue is shoved into Steve’s lap with a, “If I had known we were getting sentimental, I may have tried a little harder.”

Pulling out the paper, Steve barely peeks in before his eyes meet Bucky’s, obviously trying to keep the confusion off of his face in an attempt to avoid being cruel. The effort creates an odd kind of sickly expression, wholly worse than if he’d just left it alone. It’s sweet and funny and so Steve that Bucky can’t help but laugh, nearly missing the carefully worded question, “You… went grocery shopping?”

“Jeeze, you’re an idiot,” and god help _him_ it sounds like praise.

Bucky snatches the bag, grabbing what he can of the contents with one hand before tossing a banana, followed by a small package of chocolate covered nuts, and then a produce bag holding exactly one stalk of celery onto Steve’s lap. After a second passes where no dawning light appears on Steve’s face, Bucky reaches back in to get the container of peanut butter and flings it hard enough to thud against Steve’s chest before dumping the still over half full bag out onto the cushion next to him.

Steve snatches a peach before it can roll off the couch, eyebrows raising when he finally arrives late to realization.

“Is this —?”

“All the shit you used to be allergic to? At least everything that they sell at a grocery store. We can find you a goat to pet later.”

He’s sure no one’s ever died by grinning but Steve’s is fierce enough that it could possibly snap a muscle and Bucky wonders if it hurts while he tries not to focus too hard on how much younger Steve looks when he looks this pathetic. It’s a ridiculous sight, on all accounts, and perfect in a way that Bucky wishes there was a way to plaster it on for good.

“How did you even _remember_ all this?” Steve asks, surveying the damage.

It’s an innocent question, not meant in the layers that Bucky’s brain automatically still go to, and he forces himself away from the darker corners — unwilling to spoil the moment.

Kidding instead, “Let this be added to my hoard of evidence that I was the only thing keeping you alive.”

“I’ve never said otherwise,” Steve replies, smile somehow growing at Bucky’s murmur of, _Bullshit you haven’t,_ before finding the banana in the chaos.

“I’m sure you’ve already tried a lot of it, and I’m just acting on faith that you’re cured of them,” Bucky explains as Steve half-ignores him, peeling the fruit. “But it could be an interesting training exercise. How fast can one super soldier carry another to a hospital when under duress with snow as a factor?”

Only Steve’s too busy to participate in the banter, face cringing around the bite of banana as if it’s fighting back.

“Oh, God. How do you people —?” desperately looking for something to spit it into and seeming to accept his fate when he comes up short.

“Yeah, textures probably a bit weird to a newbie.”

Bucky’s not laughing, he’s _not,_ not even when Steve shoves the rest offending fruit at him and looks on in horror as Bucky takes a bite and asks around it, “What? I’m not going to waste it just cause your tongues a wimp!”

“Show you wimp,” is all Steve gets out as he gets to his feet.

Loosening his joints, Bucky allows himself to be tackled, folding his body into itself to ensure that he hits the floor ass first. Though he makes a fuss all the same, moaning like only those inches from death have a right to, their unspoken signal that they’re actually fine. Steve rolls off of him almost immediately, ensuring his elbow finds a soft spot on the way off, and Bucky knows he has Steve’s Christmas spirit to thank for the fact that he’s not _accidentally_ kneed in the balls for good measure.

They lie there, watching the lights from their tiny tree dance on the ceiling, bouncing off the glass from the ceiling fixture. The sounds from the trucks outside are a soothing thing, coming more often now that the storm's dying down, and Bucky wishes the windows were open despite the cold. That he could hear them better, and the music too, that the lamp was off and the room was dimmer, that the inch between Steve and his shoulders would vanish and that a bunch of little things were different.

Enough to change everything.

“You should take the bed tonight,” Steve whispers, not looking at him. “S’not fair, you always out here on the couch.”

“It’s your bed. Besides,” and he _does_ mean it, “I’m fine the way things are.”

Steve nods in his peripheral, shifting against the hardwood until the back of his hand finds the back of Bucky’s. The metal still isn’t the most sensitive with temperatures, though Bucky knows the skin is warm against it. It makes up for it though, in droves, when it comes to detecting pressure — enough that Bucky can feel the hairs on Steve’s wrist against his own.

“Just let me know. You’re allowed to change your mind.”

Bucky’s head rocks away to the right, spotting the banana where it was flung in the tussle only a few feet away. He stretches for it before resetting, smiling at Steve’s disgusted face as he takes a bite, his mouth being full as good of an excuse as he needs for keeping it shut.

* * *

** _January_ **

Bucky had eventually started climbing the walls and his therapist hadn’t exactly been subtle when she explained that being the creator of his own captivity didn’t change his nature to rage against it. At first, he’d been reluctant. He could handle going out when it was for a reason, focusing his plethora of nervous energy on the things needing to get done. He’d even gone out to meet up with some people a few times with Steve, managing the noise of the bar so long as his back was to the wall and he could see the door, telling himself that anything that was going to go wrong would do so with or without his presence and that he’d rather be there to have Steve’s back.

But the thought of just being _out_ was a hard one to grasp.

“You remember what happened at the Halloween parade —” he had tried to protest, though she cut him off.

“I remember that you felt overwhelmed and left. That you _think_ you may have knocked some people over in your hurry. That you found someplace that you felt comfortable enough to text Steve and asked him to come get you,” she had said, firmly, in the way she always used when she’s no longer looking for his opinion. “I remember that you took care of yourself in a non-violent manner. Though I seem to be missing the part that has you convinced you should remain chained indoors.”

“I’m just saying — it didn’t go well.”

“And _I’m_ just saying that giving yourself some credit would make my job easier,” pausing in her speech to allow Bucky the time to roll his eyes. “It was also months ago and not exactly a metaphor for a toe in the water.”

“No one told me there’d be flamethrowers.”

“A walk, James. Just try it, right around the block,” she said, staring him down where he sat across from her, unconvinced. “Taking back the world isn’t the same as saving it. It isn’t some all-or-nothing, dramatic, explosive moment. You can do it pieces. You _should_ do it in pieces.”

He had sighed and reluctantly promised, “A walk.”

Which was how Bucky had started wandering the neighborhood in incrementally widening loops as the new year started to stretch into being. Barely noticing, at first, the way people’s routines transformed into a part of his until they were suddenly known, cared for, things that he looked forward to. The woman a block down who had to threaten her kids onto the school bus every day in a tone so loving he ached for his own mother. A man two streets over who sat on his stoop ridiculously early every morning, reading the actual paper, and waving at anyone who would meet his eye. The dog walker who’d be pulled along, noon sharp, down Clark Street trying desperately to look like he had everything under control. There were dozens of them, fragments of their lives weaving into his in small off ways.

Until one day, half paying attention, he’d end up journeying as far as Park Slope, just to get yelled at by an elderly woman he was positive he’d never met before.

“You at least _look_ like you’re capable of being useful, though the hair has me doubting,” she had hurled at him, angling into his path. White hair, sagging skin, and a back that’d seen better days all made for a convincing picture, though there was plenty of fire left in her eyes as she sized him up in turn.

“Grab my bags for me, give you a fiver for the trouble,” though it wasn’t really an offer, the end of her cane waving towards the open cab door as she started walking away.

The driver had nothing to offer him in a way of help and with a look over his shoulder at the woman opening the door to the first floor of the split level, Bucky sighed against the thought that he could take her — if this was somehow the world’s most bizarre set up. Arms full and mind warring between hysterical and wary, he had followed her inside.

The apartment could be described as loud though only in a visual sense. Shades of pink everywhere, plates painted with woodland creatures framing the walls, mismatched furniture, and more potted plants than could ever be necessary cluttered most of the surfaces. By the hair everywhere Bucky hoped there was a cat that was simply yet to be seen. Though, as accosting as it was at first glance, it was instantly recognizable as a home. The type of place you walk into and know that it belongs to someone that has done their best to love it.

“You like sandwiches?”

Bucky had followed the sound of her voice to the kitchen, dumping the bags onto the tiny two person table as gently as possible, still rattling her set of glass salt and pepper shakers in the process.

“Suppose that depends on what you put in ‘em.”

“Roast beef,” she answered, clearly starting on a second sandwich that there was no way she was packing into a frame as small as hers.

“Thank you, but I’m not really —”

“Men that look like you are _always_ hungry,” she’d laughed, carrying on. “Now find the milk and put it away, don’t want it going bad.”

And he’d done it, for some odd reason. Ate her sandwich too and watched her game shows, was piss poor help with the crossword, and listened to her go on about her grandkids.

“Julia — the oldest — is about to finish med school, if you can believe it,” and Bucky hadn’t answered that he had absolutely no reason not to. “No time for dating, the way they treat those students. Pretty thing, though,” eyes trailing off from the TV towards Bucky, only to find a cringe on his face. She sighed as loudly as one possibly could under their breath, “Shoulda known, with pants that tight.”

It’d been hours, one assured _‘Everything okay?’_ text from Steve, and more tea than Bucky’s bladder could handle later when she finally released him with an unceremonial, “Getting late now,” despite it only being four.

“Fed ya, you at least owe me a name,” she had demanded at the door.

Too amused to be mad, Bucky bit back the reminder that he had carried her fifty pounds worth of groceries and was missing his promised Lincoln, simply answering, “James,” from the sidewalk.

Her nose scrunched above a frown, unapologetically dissatisfied with the response despite the answer being completely out of his control by the very nature of the question.

“Doesn’t suit you,” she complained.

He’d been readying for a round of explaining _Bucky_ when Ruth declared her own solution in a tone that made it perfectly clear they’d have ended up here no matter what Bucky’s name had been. “Think I’ll just call you Handsome.”

Laughing, his hands had found their way into his pockets as he’d nodded, wondering what happened to the man who was so sure the upper hand had been his only hours ago at noon. “Whatever you’d like, ma’am.”

“Oh, fuck that. Call me Ruth or just don’t call.” Shutting the door with nothing more than a, “You best come back now.”

And weirder still, Bucky had. First with two roast beef subs, then with new slippers when he’d noticed that hers had nearly run through the soles, and then with a deck of cards when she’d asked him to play bridge only to not be able to find her own.

“You don’t have to buy your way in, ya know? Not charging admission here, Handsome,” she’d scolded on his way out after the fourth visit.

She’d been no better at pretending to be mad when he started bringing flowers instead, only showing up empty handed on the days he was scheduled for grocery help — free hands a must for the amount of stuff she managed to buy every week.

“How many boyfriends you feeding, Ruth?” he had joked once, near the beginning.

Though she just patted his bicep as he walked past where she was holding the door open, murmuring, “Don’t worry about them, Handsome, you’re still my best guy.”

Bucky spent an afternoon cleaning out the top cabinets in the kitchen she couldn’t reach and started doing the vacuuming after watching her struggle with the heavy out of date machine and in return Ruth’d done a terrible job of being supportive during his first interaction with an electric can opener.

They’d always migrate towards the living room when the chores were done, TV on and usually ignored. She’d listen to him. _Talk_ to him like a normal person. About his family being gone and a vague mention of an unnamed war, about returning to New York after too long away. About Steve. Particulars were parried as often as honesty could allow but he left his form sloppy, dodging details with a certain level of clumsiness that would make his intention obvious, somehow knowing she wouldn’t ask.

She didn’t, her own stories plenty full of intentional holes, even if she wasn’t quite as allergic to specifics as Bucky himself was. His own questions were abandoned where they sprouted when Ruth had mentioned the homeless veterans’ charity that explained how her fridge managed to empty each Thursday, or when he’d catch her staring in a too familiar way at a hanging photo of a young man and woman in military uniform, the grainy coloring showing its age.

Bucky had buried the desire to tell her that he understood, knowing it was her conversation to start if they ever had it, rerouting the thought and spending the night reading up on Vietnam, just incase.

They play cards, they read together in shared silences, and she laughs when Bucky throws on her old record player and dances with a couch cushion when she uses her knees as an excuse to get out of being claimed as a partner. The one time Bucky tries to call her _Doll_ she throws a remote at his head, scaring the daylights out her cat, Smokey, just when he was starting to win the damn thing’s favor. After that, it isn’t long before she starts sending him home with leftovers, adamentally yelling at him to share with Steve as if he’s the one she spends her afternoons bossing around.

Things were starting to feel less temporary as the hue of familiar tinted more of the world.

Which is when, with Bucky half under her bed as he fights with a storage bin full of yarn that’s caught on the low frame, she finally asks, “So. Why’re you here, Handsome?”

Knowing what she’s asking has nothing to do with now, he scoots his way backwards to freedom, preparing himself for the type of somber heart to heart he’s had plenty too many of — only to catch her staring at his ass. The sudden realization that hands that arthritic won’t be crocheting anytime soon is one he has to hide his amusement from, turning to yank the bin the rest of the way out as an act to bury it in. He pops open the lid and lobs one of the yarn balls at her, a pretty blue one that’s close to his favorite shade, missing intentionally by over a foot.

“I’m not some piece of meat, you know?” he grunts, the smile catching up with him.

“I got no idea what you’re on about.”

Winning isn’t an option, and even if it were — a sulking Ruth isn’t worth the trouble for a victory this small. So he curves left, shooting back around towards the beginning.

“Why’re you _letting_ me be here, Ruth?”

“Asked you first.”

“Asked you second.”

A huff her lungs shouldn’t be capable of vibrates off of the walls as she turns to leave, using pretending to be annoyed as a cover for wanting to go sit down after being forced to stand for the show he’d unknowingly put on.

“You got any idea how much a maid costs in this city? Saving myself a fortune by letting ya stop by,” she finally answers, easing back into her favorite chair — preferring the one by the window like the busybody she is.

“Yeah?” Bucky laughs, shoulder leaning against the wall. “Well, I think I just needed a friend.”

Bucky always appreciates it, the way she eyes him so blatantly. That she nearly never tries to bullshit him.

“So? Think you’re the only one or something? Everybody thinking they’re special these days.” Winking at him before she snaps, “Now turn on the tea kettle on your way out,” the smile on her face wide in a way where all of her laugh lines suddenly make sense.

The hour long walk home to Brooklyn Heights seems longer than normal, though Bucky tells himself it has everything to do with the way winter was stealing the sun earlier and earlier and not the new feeling banging around inside of his brain. He fights the urge to jog the rest of the way, letting his feet gently traverse the miles as his lungs make the first notice of the drop in temperature, more status update than protest.

It was harder to tell what it meant when his heart knocked too hard on his ribs at the sight of the light on in the fourth story corner window, announcing that Steve was home and probably already starting the process of ruining dinner.

“How’s Ruth fairing?” Steve asks as the door’s still opening, Bucky equally concerned about the fact that he hadn’t bothered with the slide latch as he is about whatever Steve’s brewing in the microwave.

“As surly as ever,” he says, trying not to sound so happy about it. “A combination of Smokey throwing up her breakfast, the new upstairs neighbor being in possession of a guitar, and she’s not pleased about someone either kissing or killing someone else on that show she watches.” Waving off Steve’s raised eyebrow with a, “You haven’t seen it. I’m telling you, it’s just as likely to be either.”

“Sounds like quite the trifecta.”

Bucky only grunts at first, too relieved to see the bowl of pasta being pulled out of the microwave. “It’s an inspiration, how she endures such trials.”

Steve pauses for a second, his hand hovering over a bowl holding a packet of a powdered something they’re somehow able to call cheese before reanimating again, dumping it in and stirring it haphazardly. Saying, all too carefully, “You know, I looked into it and there’s some places for sale over there —”

“I like it here.”

“Sure, I mean Heights is home. But it’s a stone’s throw away from Park Slope, it’s not like we’re tucking tail and running. I know you just inherited the address, if you wanted to we could find a place closer —”

“I like it _here_.”

A smile follows a sigh which comes before Steve rattles their bowls down on their laminate table. He grabs two beers from the fridge and the twelve dollars a pound parmesan cheese Steve insists on sprinkling on top of his _instant macaroni,_ as if that will make the meal forgivable, before finding his way into the chair kitty-corner to Bucky’s.

“We could get you your own bike, if you don’t want to take mine.”

“I like walking,” and this time it’s around a mouthful of too-hot mediocre pasta.

“What exactly is this called? When someone refuses to allow their own lives to become easier in any sort of way?”

“Altruism.”

“No…” Steve puts on a show of pretending to think. “Oh! Being a _jackass_!”

And Bucky definitely doesn’t almost snort processed cheese out of his nose.

He thinks of Ruth and what she would say about the dinner before him, imagining her even trying to keep up with Steve’s appetite. Of _Steve’s_ inability to be, at first, anything other than a level of polite which will only piss her off. Of the two of them, biting at each other like squabbling geese, both trying to fake like they hate it. He’d give them an hour, tops, before he’s no longer either of their favorites.

In one spectacular moment, Bucky’s chest is warm and the world feels only as big as his shoulders can carry. It’s a world which Bucky wants, more than anything, to not be kept in compartments.

“You should come with me, to Ruth’s, the next time I go. If you’re done being a punk, that is.”

Steve’s fork has a spectacular reaction to the idea, suddenly on the floor with a startling clatter.

“Did she — did she ask you to ask me?”

“No, but she’ll love you. _Everyone_ loves you.” Bucky watches the tick in the corner of Steve’s mouth, like he’s telling himself not to fake a smile. “If you’re actually worried, I can run the idea by her first. But I’m telling you, I know my girl, and the more men around to yell at the better.”

“Does she even know I exist?”

“Of course she does,” and even Bucky’s not sure why he sounds so affronted. “But if you don’t want to —”

“No!” Steve nearly yells. “Of course I do. I’m just surprised, is all. I figured you wanted something that was just for you.”

He’s not off base, not completely, and he wouldn’t lie and say he’s hoping Steve tags along every time. However, there’s a part of him, good or not, that still can’t fathom himself without the man beside him. Ruth helps makes him feel real again, makes him laugh, makes him magical sandwiches whose taste exceeds their components. It’s not a piece of himself that Bucky wants to keep in shadow.

Not from Steve whose company can make even the worst dinner the best part of his day.

“I said you should come, didn’t I? But some ground rules first. Don’t you go forgetting she’s taken.” Steve’s palms raise automatically to Bucky’s warning tone in mock defense. “I’m serious, those baby blues may have worked on all my girlfriends growing up —”

“That’s not how I remember things going.”

“ — but me and Ruth, we’re long haul, baby, so paws off.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he solemnly swears, hands still up and face miraculously serious.

“And two, for the love of god, let her win at poker. Whenever she loses she just starts accusing you of cheating and it becomes a whole thing. We only play for buttons so, I’m telling you, just fold if you have anything decent.”

“I understand why you’re so smitten.”

“Three, just accept whatever she calls you as inevitable but stick to Ruth yourself.” Bucky points at Steve, “That’s something I had to learn the hard way so you owe me.”

“So — don’t try to bed your 78 year old girlfriend and be nice — but not too nice.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, the scarecrow has a brain!”

Offense is poured on a little too thick and for a brief second Bucky wonders if this is going to be the thing that finally kills him, oddly at peace with the idea. But Steve just huffs to hide his chuckle as he finally retrieves his fork, tossing it across the table and using the subsequent flailing as an opening to steal Bucky’s from where it’s still sitting safely in his bowl. Though his self-pleased expression is derailed when Bucky merely wipes the utensil off on his pants, still dust-smeared from his under-bed adventure, and shoves a forkful into his mouth.

“Do you have to be so disgusting?” The question leaving Steve in the same endearing tone that, “Hey, Buck?” does a moment later.

Only answering Bucky’s _hmm?_ when he has his full attention, “I — thank you.”

Steve’s face is full of genuine gratitude. The kind the simmers in his eyes, making them crinkle at the corners above a mouth that can’t find straight on his face. It’s different from acceptance speech Steve — his smile stiff as he inevitably blazes a path between the mandatory _I’m so honored_ and another infamous Rogers _Imagine if you spent half the money this event cost on something that actually matters_ lecture that everyone knows to expect by now. Not the warm pink cheeks and slightly raised brows that make everything else about Steve look more open as he sits in his kitchen.

In their kitchen.

Bucky makes sure to moan a little louder around the next mouthful.

* * *

** _February_ **

Bucky had thought the world’d gone mad when he woke up on February first, nearly four months since the apocalypse that mostly wasn’t. In the strictest sense, he’d forgotten that Valentine’s Day was even a mark on the calendar. In a looser one, he’d gotten used to the whole holidays being cancelled trend and figured that something as ridiculous as this one would surely find room in the trash can.

Walking down streets lined with glitter-heart wreathed doors and watching his 800th commercial that boasted the elegance of rocks mined from the same dirty earth we’ll all be buried in only brought with it more questions.

It wasn’t until he stood staring at an underwear display — packs of plain whites on 2-for-1 sale hanging under a printed banner that proudly proclaimed, _Look your best for your Valentine!_ in the store’s brilliantly funny take on a romantically coded sale — that Bucky realized the allowance was in the absurdity. It was too much to face a day demanding that you be thankful, one that asked for merriness, or even a midnight that’s sole significance was the concept of letting go of what’s already passed.

But a glorified baby in a diaper that you can use as an excuse to make out with someone you barely know while eating cheap, overpriced, chocolate wasn’t exactly on par as an emotional quandary.

 _‘All you need is love,’_ Sam had said, when Bucky had mentioned it.

Not quick enough to completely hide his scoff, Bucky’s mouth stayed shut, knowing he’d need an additional week’s worth of sleep to follow through on what would have been the subsequent fight if he’d stated the fact of how very untrue that sentiment was.

There’s lots of things one needs to keep a body in motion and Bucky knows from personal experience what it’s like not to have them all in hand. The armful of nights turned sleepless due to a stomach that’d just spent its second day empty when he was just a kid. That week in Italy when his head had gone woozy and eyes were burning by the time a rainstorm saved his troop from dehydration after a water truck been’d cut off by the Axis forces. Those far from rare experiences of a mission gone wrong leaving the Asset bone deep sore from days of shiver-wrecked muscles, the serum being the only reason he hadn’t lost more limbs to frostbite when shelter couldn’t be found.

Bucky hadn’t been lacking in essentials since making a home inside of Steve’s. Though he hadn’t been lacking in love for longer — not since Steve had made the stupid choice to lay down his weapons and let Bucky kill him, forcing Bucky to remember what love _was_ to explain to himself why he couldn’t.

Things were beginning to make sense in a way they couldn’t back then.

Which is why, despite the rest of the country embracing the idea of being pierced by cupid’s bow — Bucky’s a little shaken by how surprised he is when Steve doesn’t come home at his normal time on the 14th.

At first, he assumes that traffic must be bad in the city, a torrent of frantic partners trying to get to their chosen overcrowded restaurant. An hour comes and with it goes that excuse.

The next natural explanation is that Steve’s merely been held up. He’s been working with the various school boards, going as high as state level, in pursuit of his newest side project: Getting arts funding back into the poorer communities who need the outlet the most. You’d think him a liar, the amount of hours it takes to get a paintbrush into the hands of a kid in Brownsville, but Steve’d been tireless. However, unless he’s literally holding some committee hostage, the likelihood that Steve’s occupied there turns into a pumpkin a few hours early at seven.

By eight Bucky has assembled a mental list of names Steve’s mentioned. Janine, a friend of Sam’s from the VA, that Bucky had met only once. She was a frequent flier on the friends’ outings and Steve had looked downright captivated the time he’d told Bucky about how she’d dislocated an asshole’s shoulder when she’d caught him slipping something into another girl’s drink. Then there was Maya, the single mom who had become all the more hands on in the schools’ doings once Steve had inserted himself into the meetings. Steve had looked exasperated as he described the woman’s underestimation of how big a personal bubble should be, though he also had expertly dodged Bucky’s question of, _“Okay, but is she cute?”_ which was more of an answer than an answer would have been. And Karen, down in the apartment below them, nice and funny and just so happened to always be in the stairway at the same time as Steve — even if Bucky had to listen to her door open and close every time she heard someone coming, her effort to _keep running into each other_ an admirable feat.

Which brought him to Stephen, an idea Bucky, for whatever reason, wanted to think about even less than the other three. He was another one of their bar regulars whose source Bucky had never been told, too amused by the way Steve had told the story of how the guy had first suggested that Steve go by _‘Cap’_ to avoid the confusion of two Steve’s in one group. Of course, he’d been dubbed, with no offer of negotiation, Stephen by the time the tabs had been settled. The two of them had found a weird version of friendship in the spat and Bucky’d been dragged along on a few afternoon hikes and a round at the batting cages, though now he wonders if he wasn’t so off — feeling like a third wheel.

The oven clock rolling over to nine finds Bucky’s phone in his hands, him typing out the message, _‘Hey. Just let me know you’re okay, if you can?’_ that he sends before he can overthink it.

 _‘Yeah? On my way back now,’_ pings back almost immediately.

_‘Home before ten. I’ve taught you nothing.’_

Getting back only, _‘???’_

He decides to wait until Steve gets home to actually rib him, telling himself the words will eventually come, unsure why he’s being so particular about how this goes. As if, _What’s a first date get a guy in Rogersland? Is a peck on the cheek too scandalous?_ will somehow actually wound him.

He’s happy for Steve, he is, even if the guy is hardly all alone in the world.

Bucky’s become his vastly underpaid assistant, passing out fliers for all his crusades and sitting in on city hall meetings as a decoy citizen, list of conversation starters tucked into his pocket for if there’s a lull once they open the discussion to the floor. He’s there to halve the time it takes to harass their neighbors into voting, the new tradition of Bucky taking the even numbered apartments blooming from the unimpressive quip, _“You’re clearly the odd one here,”_ that had Steve wheezing for some inexplicable reason. He helps Steve run the lines of his speeches and prints out pictures of local politicians before listing their names and positions on the back, Bucky working them like the vocabulary flashcards of old until Steve has them memorized. And Bucky is always there to break out the good stuff — double fudge chocolate chip ice cream with rainbow sprinkles — when it all inevitably doesn’t swing the right way despite Steve’s best efforts.

But this is different. Or could be. And Bucky wants for Steve whatever Steve wants for himself. So if this is that — then for once in his life, Bucky thinks that maybe he could squeeze himself into the unrelenting supportive role and ditch their favored hard way.

Besides, worse comes to worst… Bucky still knows the most painful way to remove someone’s heart from their chest, should they think it wise to leave Steve’s bruised.

A familiar knock on the door allows him to pretend that the ease of that thought shouldn’t be looked at, rising from his chair in the kitchen to undo the slide locks which Steve only had to nearly break the door down three times to remember the existence of.

“What were you saying?” he asks, tone merely curious, as Bucky opens the door.

Bucky takes in his blue button down shirt, his nice jeans, and his shoes which are on the fancier side without being pretentious.

“I was giving you shit. It’s kind of my thing.”

“Yeah? Well your jokes hit a little harder when I know what you’re on about,” Steve laughs, grabbing a glass of water before moving into the living room and onto the couch.

“Your date, Romeo.”

He’s not sure if it’s the comment, or Steve’s penchant for always drinking so fast, that sets him off but Bucky still appreciates that he’s able to sit back and enjoy it when Steve starts sputtering, choking around the water he probably just inhaled. It’s a fantastic sight, a vast improvement from yesterdays gone when Bucky had to worry about a coughing fit turning into an asthma attack.

Voice still raspy, Steve finally asks, “Who said anything about a date?”

Shifting his weight from one foot to the other is already enough of a tell, the fact that he has to fight the urge to do it again in the span of a few seconds is a wildly stupid thing.

 _Supportive,_ he reminds himself, even as he feels desperate for specifics. Steve’s more than proven that he’s plenty capable of taking care of himself, but the world’s more dangerous than it’s ever been. Steve needs to be sure of the people he’s alone with, of where he allows them to take him, and having someone else in on the details if something goes wrong has never hurt anyone. But wording that in a way Steve won’t rail against is a wildly delicate act.

Proximity was always Bucky’s weapon of choice with Steve and he’s not too proud to lean on a crutch. Bucky takes the cushion next to him, twice as close as he usually would, which is double the distance that Steve would have chosen. It leaves him room to pull a knee up, propping his elbow on the back of the couch, body angled towards Steve who’s watching him, patience slowly waning.

“Just figured,” trying his best not to make it sound like an accusation when it isn’t one. “You normally always tell me where you’re going to be and when to expect you.” And Bucky has to commend himself for the way his voice and eyes both hold their ground as he tacks on, honestly, “You’re aware of how talented I am at worrying.”

Though Steve’s expression is nothing other than the sympathy Bucky desperately didn’t want.

“I did tell you, over the weekend.” Continuing when he gives up on whatever Bucky’s face must be doing as he scans through his memory files, “I said that Pepper was going to be back in New York, that we were going to grab dinner together.”

“Yeah, on thursday.”

A smile invades Steve’s eyes before it even sets its sight on his mouth. The most dangerous kind in his arsenal.

“And what day do you _think_ it is?”

“Well, judging by your Mr. Asshole impression, I’m going to guess it’s Thursday.”

Steve confirms with only a soft laugh. And Bucky’s already feeling the ache of how Steve must be feeling after seeing her — just for the fact that the subject of Bucky’s stupidity is handled so tamely.

“You eat?” Steve asks, though Bucky’s not entirely sure why, the guy turning away too quickly to see the responding shake of his head, getting up even though he’d only sat down a minute ago. “Let’s get my leftovers heated up for you, Sherlock.”

“ _You_ have leftovers?”

“The question you should be asking is how much of the menu I ordered.”

“Hope you didn’t leave poor Pepper with the tab.”

“As if she’d give me the choice. We never even saw a bill.”

Bucky transitions the fifteen feet from his spot on the couch to his normal seat at the table, aware of how silly it is to have one at all. Unassigned, chosen by no one other than himself, and yet the back of his mind itches, imagining sitting in either of the other two. It’s an entirely human thing that reminds him of his childhood.

“How is she?” Bucky asks, the unsureness of whether he really wants to know hanging low in his tone like a mourning flag.

The hum of the microwave matches the pitch of Steve’s sigh almost too perfectly as he leans back against the countertop, arms crossing and holding the fork in his hand a little too tightly — like he’s willing to use it as a weapon against whatever he’s thinking.

“She’s — She’s Pepper,” and his pained tone, combined with the crease working into his forehead, brew a heartbreaking concoction. “She’s doing better than anyone else in her position would be. I just hope it’s not an act.”

The plate is slid in front of Bucky before Steve slips into his own seat, leaning onto the table top as he adds, “But you wouldn’t know what that’s like, would you?”

He knows he’s being teased for what Steve calls _The Patented James Barnes Everything’s Always Okay Smile_ despite the fact that that particular pretense hasn’t been a favorite accessory of his as of late.

Feigning being fine, in general, has been carted towards an exit ramp. They fixed the radiator that kept banging in the middle of the night when Bucky admitted he was already half past nuts waiting on the landlord to do something about it. He had caved and asked to set up code words after the one phone conversation where Steve had, unknown to Bucky, been surrounded by adoring fans and his voice had kicked up high and sweet and pancake flat all at the same time, leaving Bucky to work himself into a panic wondering who Steve was performing for and why. Steve now leaves his bedroom door half open, past the spot that it’ll creek and wake him, after Bucky admitted he’d paced himself sick, wanting to go in and check on him after hearing a noise that hadn’t been Steve’s jet engine snoring.

Bucky’s not pretending to be okay. Though he’d be a liar if he claimed that he puts the worst of it out on display either, blocking what he can of the breakdowns from Steve’s already overfilled plate. To the point that when he woke up last Friday at 4AM, he had run down to the lobby of the building before breaking into the basement, hoping the concrete box would hold the sounds of the angry screams he could no longer hold back after a too-vivid nightmare set inside the cage of a HYDRA cell.

However, this isn’t news to either of them and will just unravel into a petty fight about who’s doing the worser job of hiding their angst until Steve’s mad with the loss and pouting for it. So instead, Bucky flips the script, intentionally misunderstanding it.

_Pepper — you wouldn’t know what that’s like._

And it’s a more interesting question if only for the fact that he’s not sure if it’s true.

There’s a memory, or half of one, that feels like it’s come out of a blender of agony. Arm gone and blood everywhere, bright lights and man in white shoving him onto a table. There’d been leather straps holding him down and the sound of a saw and some kind of anesthesia filling his lungs, and just enough time to think, _I’m never going to see Steve again…_ and he wonders, now, if that’s the same thing.

“Was I ever in love?”

Steve’s eyes go wide, face strings pulling hard in the way they do when the real bad shit hits the most important of fans. They soften as they slide across the table to Bucky’s untouched food, to Bucky’s too quickly rising and falling chest, before finding Bucky’s mouth which has been left half open — as if he’s about to say something else.

“Why?” Steve asks in a particular way, the way you’d ask someone for a password when you already know they don’t have it.

Bucky wants to tell him the truth. That there are still so many gaps that it’s hard to tell when things are missing or when a particular shelf simply has nothing to hold. How he can’t remember anything, or anyone, that may belong there but when he really looks — there’s a break in the dust as if there ought to be something holding the spot. How he knows that look in people, the way they touch, in the dips of their voices. Like when Ruth talks about her late husband, or when Tony would glance at Pepper when he thought no one was watching, or how Bruce will pause just a millisecond before getting out Natasha’s name.

He’ll see a couple from a block away, shoulders bumping as they try to get off of the bus while holding hands, making a mess of it with full cheeked smiles and easy eyes and just know what they’re feeling.

How, he figures, he should only be able to recognize an emotion he’s familiar with but when he digs for the source he only climbs out of that hole having found a suspicious amount of nothing.

“Can’t a guy just want to know?”

Silence wins the table, for a moment, as Bucky watches Steve’s face fall at the obvious lie before reassembling. He wants to apologize, to give Steve the courtesy of admitting that he’s sidestepping and the respect of offering an explanation. To say that he’s scared. That there’s a whole world of fear brewing in the idea of what Bucky may be admitting to if he were to offer a full confession without owning the context of self that most people automatically have.

“Not that you ever told me,” Steve tells Bucky’s dinner, gaze jumping away on a badly hid wince.

“Now that’s a carefully crafted sentence.”

Steve shrugs casually, but his eyes are serious when they’re tugged back upwards with obvious effort, like they’re a physical weight to be hauled. He’s not upset, not angry or worried, but it’s enough to get Bucky to finally put his unused fork down. “I mean, you had plenty of secrets. As many as a guy can have from the roommate he shares a studio apartment with.”

“Steve Rogers, holding his tongue. The end of this speech must be a sucker if you won’t say it.”

The joke half lands, Steve’s eyes a little brighter once he’s done rolling them, and his shoulders quit trying to bust a seam as they go lax.

“I don’t know if you would have said, if it’d been a guy, that’s all.”

He feels the words sink in, one by one, out of order to the point he has to manually rearrange them back to sense before he can really look at them. He’s not sure if they feel right but they definitely don’t feel wrong as he tries to balance them out against the inside of himself, unfamiliar with what this newest feeling is. Not _upset,_ not angry or worried, but enough to make Bucky glad that his fork is out of his hand, otherwise it may have been bent into an unfortunate shape.

“I’m queer.” And Bucky only realizes it’s not a question once the words are out.

“I don’t know if you’re gay. And they have a lot of fancy new words now — there’s a lot of things you can be, or none of them.” Steve’s hand reaches out to grab his forearm, circling the flesh and holding on a shade past too tight. It won’t bruise but it will be pink for a couple of hours and it makes Bucky grateful every time, knowing he’s not the only one who forgets his own strength sometimes.

“I’m not here to tell you who you are, Buck. I’m just trying to be honest.”

Bucky checks in with his face at that. It’s stern and clenched and feels like it must look like he’s desperately trying to endure something. Never having been one to claim that he wears thinking well.

He imagines the girls he remembers from back as young 20 year old, back when his age was still an easy to calculate thing. Soft skin and gentle curves, red lips and long hair. It’s not a hardship, thinking about what was under their skirts. Stretchy nylon, silk panties, and welcoming wetness. He doesn’t _not_ like it.

He imagines some of the guys he’s met, steering away from any faces he knows too well. Mark who always seems to be on check out at the grocery store, slim and fit with strong features that manage to come together. Jose, who tends to the roses that grow next to the building a block over, tan skin and a hand that was both firm and gentle when he’d shaken Bucky’s. Or the nameless man who lives in the townhouse next door, first floor, who wears his suits like he should be in some kind of magazine, a pretty face that Bucky thinks would look better laughing. It’s a different sort of not-minding, one that buzzes a bit.

He looks at Steve and tries not to think of anything, finding his facial reset button and slapping it hard, his mouth curling into a smirk that feels mostly on point.

“This is several continents away from my biggest concern, Rogers, I’m not about to jump off a bridge over this. And I don’t — I know you were scrawny but I distinctly remember you beating whatever you wanted out of me. Endurance,” Bucky points a finger at him, “was always your superpower.”

“I never _beat_ —!”

“Your level of annoyance wounds just as well as a fist, Stevie. But seriously. The very idea of you letting something go… did you ever ask?”

Tongue peeking out to find his lip, Steve shakes his head sharp enough to upset his hair.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Think I’d take offense or something?” Bucky doing himself no favors when it comes to getting a straight answer as he huffs, mumbling, “That’d be a first, you caring about my ego.”

But Steve stays on the marked trail.

“Do you remember Teddy?” Steve asks, and Bucky does.

One of the many fellas in Steve’s grade, voice a little soft for his age and hair always done up nice. Not much taller than Steve himself, the kid had still made as a killer shortstop. He’d fling himself around the dirt lot they used as a field despite the full bodied bruises the guy had worn more often than not, schoolyard retribution for the way him and his best friend Shawn had refused to stop looking at each other. Steve’d thrown himself into plenty of their fights, which meant Bucky had too, and he’d always complained less about it than normal, not putting it on the same tier of stupid as he categorized the rest of Steve’s wars.

Though, instead of answering, Bucky just rights them back to his previous, still unanswered question, “So what then? _You’d_ have cared if I was?”

Steve’s “No,” comes out far too fast, his whole 240lb frame reeling against it before deflating on a much slower sigh. “Be a bit hypocritical.”

His eyebrow raise is simply met with one from Steve and they sit there staring at each other a moment till Bucky snaps, a grin spreading until his face is aching with it.

“Well, what’d’ya know?” he says slowly, holding his own voice by the throat, keeping it gentle and easy, for the sole sake of it biting more when the whole thing breaks into a laugh halfway through the punchline, “The Star Spangled Man’s plan involved cocksucking!”

Bucky misses the Captain America suit just long enough to wish Steve was wearing it, if only to make a comment about how the sudden red of his cheeks would go with it so nicely, before Steve’s stealing his plate — the ceramic screeching across the laminate. Salmon never on his favorites list, Bucky snatches the knife before Steve can grab it only to twirl it between his fingers, offering the handle side to his new co-diner. The fridge is a two step walk and, compared to a plate of fish that probably cost more than he used to make in a week down at the docks, the plastic bag full of yesterday’s pizza shouldn’t look so appetizing.

It’s just as likely he enjoys it so much because of the face Steve makes when he eats a slice cold, like he’s personally offended. This time is no exception, Steve pretending to gag as Bucky takes a bite of standard pepperoni and chews around a grin, Steve turning away dramatically as if he simply can’t bear to watch. They eat like that for a moment, Bucky watching the back of Steve’s head from where he’s boosted himself onto the counter, a commercial on the TV he’d forgotten to shut off distantly trying to sell him the key to happiness.

He’s half distracted, trying to string together a joke about two possible immortals and the semi-threatening line, _A diamond is forever,_ which is probably how the, “Stephen?” weasels its way out into the open.

Fork clinking own, Steve gives the muscles in his side the full work out, twisting around as far as he can in an attempt to look at Bucky head on. His arm wraps around the back of the chair as he tries to swallow the bite in his mouth, brows furrowed at the appearance of his full name which Bucky hadn’t even used when he’d been crumbling into nothingness. A name which has never belonged to him.

“No, I —” Bucky begins to correct, only Steve’s face is blank in a way that says more than anything, wide open and wrapped in slowly tangling confusion, eyebrows getting a workout as he waits for Bucky to lead the way. “No more secrets.”

The distance between them is too small to hide in, Steve’s jaw muscle bulging as a precursor to his response of, “I don’t know if I can promise you that.”

Which shouldn’t make Bucky smile, the way that it does. Not Steve’s strained expression or his low voice, the way his eyes dip to the floor just to flick back to Bucky’s at the sight of feet approaching. His head tips up, pupils contracting as his face angles towards the overhead light, and it’s not really Bucky’s decision when his hand lifts, brushing his fingers through Steve’s hair — pushing the strands away from his face.

He wonders how much of a say Steve had, if any at all, in the way his eyes closed, head tilting by centimeters towards Bucky’s palm. It wasn’t the plan, to hold it there, but the sight isn’t one he feels like rushing past, and he spreads his fingers to bracket Steve’s ear instead of simply slipping away.

“Compromise then,” Bucky offers, watching as Steve’s eyes open and adjust to the lack of space between them. Close enough that Bucky wonders whether Steve can feel his breath on his skin — a potent emotion rearing at the thought, like a mental kick to the shin. “When it starts hurting to not say it — you tell me. Whatever it is, big classified government secret or not, we’ll work it out. You and me.”

Bucky feels, where his thumb presses against the underside of Steve’s jaw, the thick swallow that follows. It’s pushed back with force, confronting a slight protest, as if it’s a little too much. As if Steve had missed one or two.

“I’ll try,” is all Steve says, when he finally says something.

“A Steve Rogers attempt is anyone else’s victory parade,” patting Steve’s cheek a little too hard, the sound of the smack working as some kind of pressure valve.

There’s finally some room to breathe between the two of them, all of it created by Bucky, whose hand was now back in Steve’s hair, ruffling up what he had just fussed flat. With a half hearted groan of annoyance, Steve grabs his wrist, pulling it away from himself by inches and holding it there, hovering close enough that Bucky could still touch him, probably, if he flexed his fingers.

“I’ve been pretending to drink that crap you call coffee every morning,” Steve tells him, voice buried under several thickly poured layers of grief. “But I dump it out as soon as you’re not looking.”

“What are you on about? It’s fine!”

“I don’t know how you even mess it up with the new pots — I’m beginning to wonder if something’s really wrong up there in the head of yours, Buck.”

Fingers wrap tight enough to burn when Bucky tries to jerk his arm away.

“Then stop sleeping in like a layabout and make it your damn self!”

“There’s no point anymore! I think that swill actually cured my caffeine addiction through fear alone.”

Refusing to simply give in, Bucky’s other hand makes a dash for the strip of skin just behind Steve’s ear that’s always been a ticklish spot when manipulated just right. Only, the years it’d taken Bucky to learn how to work it are the same amount that Steve’s had to recognize his strategies, and Steve’s palm is flat against the center of his chest before Bucky’s fingertips get within inches of cartilage.

Bucky pushes against the immovable force of Steve’s locked elbow, his face twisting away from Bucky’s reaching fingers. And Bucky hates how good smug looks on him now when Bucky admits, “ _Fuck_ I miss the days when my arms were longer than yours.”

Mocking sympathy, while twice as annoying, wears no worse on a face like that.

“Now, Buck, you always told me that it's not the _size_ of the ship that —”

“God, you’re a real piece of work.”

“Said if it hurts, Buck, and believe me that — that piss you brew does,” with a smile wide enough that his teeth show through, forcing the innocent act off center stage. “Besides, thought you wanted honesty?”

“You don’t got a damn clue what I want, Stevie,” he jokes back.

And with a final tug, Steve releases him.

* * *

** _March_ **

The distance of five months creates a complicated vantage point to access the damage from. On one hand, the sense of a divide has finally formed — a distinct then and now which hadn’t existed before. It’s easier to think about something when it no longer feels like a blanket being held to your face in the darkness. But the tactical advantage of a wide berth ends when you come to the details.

Each step forward drags with it a horizon, the past that lies behind it growing blurrier as life goes on. So much had happened so quickly before, during, and after, that there’d been little time to process it all and things had definitely been left sorted wrong — leaving notches on timelines unlabeled and _what if’s_ unanswerable.

Bucky only knows there’s no going back to collect the specifics. That he’s walked away with what he could carry and the only choice is acceptance of that. Some days it comes so easy he’s almost grateful for the missing pieces. The day he realizes he can’t remember the last thing Natasha said to him isn’t one of them.

Steve’s still coping in his own way. His days filled to the brink with political meetings that Bucky would rather be dead, again, than go to. He doesn’t know if they’re achieving anything, the problem of half the population suddenly returning to a world that’d been forced to move on without them being a spectacularly unique one. People whose houses have been sold, jobs rehired, and accounts emptied. Bucky has no answers to give, knowing his opinion that everyone shut the fuck up and just be decent to each for once has no chance of winning the popular vote.

Speech after speech, appearance after appearance, Steve preaches the song of putting yourself in your neighbors’ shoes to too many indifferent ears. Looking more tired after each than the last.

“Still a saint, Rogers,” Bucky had said, shaking his head as he cooked them dinner. Spaghetti and sauce from a jar, HYDRA having skipped the culinary segment of his asset training, leaving pre-war Bucky’s idea of a sloppy joe as a gourmet meal to reign.

“It could have been you, Buck. If things had been different, if I wasn’t — it could be you out there with nothing.”

Peppered in the in-betweens is charity work, the world seemingly too busy falling apart to get into any new trouble and with Steve’s dance card finally empty of villains, his hands naturally sought out something to fix.

Bucky tries to go, to help, to restore. In the beginning, it’d been nearly impossible. Too many people, screaming children, and not enough exits had made it hard enough to endure, a perpetual frown of concentration on his face that he couldn’t shake off. Fortunately for him, and not so lucky for everyone else, smiles were probably rarer these days and no one seemed to notice. Each time, it had felt a little bit less like something he was barely tolerating, even if the increments were too small to track. Steve stayed in sight, worried glances turning to something thankful and warm when Bucky, always, would feel the stare on his skin and look back.

Things were getting easier. He was doing _better_.

Until a clothing drive in a warehouse down in the South Bronx had squirreled out Bucky’s last straw. The building boasted wide open windows on every wall, many of them high enough to lend a view of the neighboring roofs, the glass that wasn’t already shattered out no match for a bullet and somehow still clean enough to line up a shot through. A ceiling full of rafters with too many blind spots, an aesthetic that favored dark corners, and the sounds of the small crowd echoing off of the brick walls all added up to a recipe for disaster. He should have left before his foot had ever gotten through the door.

Within seconds he itched, like a breath on the side of your neck. It only took minutes for the twitch in his flesh hand to appear. And only an hour, plus one vigorously slammed metal trash can lid, before Bucky had found himself the alley behind the building, face in his hands, head between his knees, as he panted against Steve’s soft whisper of, “You don’t have to be okay, but you’re safe. I’m here.”

Breath caught and eyes foggy but, thankfully, dry, Bucky hadn’t been surprised to find that his declaration that he was going for a walk read like an invite to Steve’s ears. They wandered a few blocks before he even realized he was headed for the water, pace picking up once a destination was chosen. Hands fisted inside the hoodie Steve liked to pretend would make him invisible, he hadn’t said anything as Bucky let himself practically crash into the railing that separated them from the sand, careful that his prosthetic didn’t bend the metal when both his hands came up to fist it.

He feels Steve’s eyes on him and turns his head, expecting concern and finding a smile. An honest one. Bucky can always tell, even when he’s not sure Steve even can, when Steve is _really_ smiling and not just telling himself to. There’s something about the way his eyes warm just a tad past too much, how the left side of his mouth tugs higher by centimeters, Steve’s jaw somehow seeming to go lax even as his muscles work his face into a grin — Bucky always knows when it’s one that he couldn’t help.

“What?” Bucky barks, softened by whatever his own stupid expression is.

“Nothing,” Steve lies. “Everytime I decide I hate the hair — I see it in the wind and start to like it again,” and that feels close, at least, to the truth.

Bucky doesn’t offer to cut it, doesn’t ask Steve if he should, doesn’t tell Steve that he thinks he may have forgotten that cutting it was a choice he could make.

“You look like you’re flying, almost,” too wayward to be an explanation. Steve’s expression is far away and plenty calm, crossing off the possibility that this is an apology. Though it’s his addition of, “It’s nice,” that confirms that Steve’s just talking to talk.

“Surprised you approve. Flying and falling have a lot in common, visually,” Bucky says, unsure why he’s making this difficult.

He repeats the new mantra from therapy, _You’re allowed to feel things_. He just wishes, sometimes, that emotions came prelabeled.

“You fell backwards.”

A hand comes up to the curve of his right shoulder, pushing it backwards as Steve’s other arm reaches across his chest to pull Bucky’s left towards him. Bucky lets himself be spun, hair now blowing into his face as his back faces the waves. Strands stick on his lips where he must have licked them wet, catching on his eyelashes as he tries, and spectacularly fails, to glare through it all.

“Now _that_ is a much better look than the first time.”

It’s meant as a joke and Bucky is far from offended. He’d started it, afterall. But there’s no laugh inside of him either and he’s afraid of becoming another show that he simply puts on.

So he says, instead, what he actually wants to. Unworried about whether the conversational transition will translate. “It doesn’t feel real.”

“What doesn’t? Everything that’s happened? Or just now?”

Bucky just nods, watching Steve’s smile transform into one of the fake ones. It’s not a lie, not in the ways that count, and Bucky can forgive him for that much.

“Do you mean that it feels like a dream? Like you’re still waiting for someone to shake you out of it?”

He breathes in, as deep as he can, Bucky’s lungs burning as they’re forced to stretch past comfort. The salt on the breeze is cusping the cliff of unpleasant and the waves crash a little too loud on the storm moving in and the hair on his face is slightly oily, a day or two past when he should have first washed it. The sky is so, very, grey.

“Too imperfect to be a dream,” Bucky confesses.

“So, do you feel like we’re just not actually here? Like you’re living in a replica that someone spent way too much time on to get just right?”

It’s too close and suddenly Bucky wants to do something really dumb, like pet Steve’s face and whisper about how the two things he’d never forgotten was the shock of a Siberian sky at night to the eyes of a Brooklyn boy and the green that swam in Steve’s blue irises. How he’d recognize the hue in objects all over the world, as he did horrible things, and fill with an ache he couldn’t understand.

He nods, instead, happy that his face is mostly shielded.

“Yeah, I’ve been there too, Buck. Morning routine: Brush your teeth, go for a run, take a shower, spend an hour convincing yourself that you’re _actually_ alive. I wouldn’t recommend it as a lifestyle.”

“If I had known _that_ then I wouldn’t have signed up for the extended trial.”

He feels lighter, already, when Steve’s real laugh is his first response. It’s in the way his shoulders shudder into it, the way his eyes don’t quite close, his tongue pressing against the back of his teeth like it doesn’t know what to do with itself.

“If it helps —” Steve stops, clearing his throat, and his voice is sickenly upbeat when he tries again. “If it helps, the way I figure is: This has to be real. None of the other options pan out.”

“Oh?”

“I mean, run the scenarios. If we were dead — _I_ would obviously be escorted straight to the Big Guy.”

Bucky nods, trying to bite back his amusement. “Sure, of course.”

“We’re talking VIP access here. Body won’t even be cold yet and those pearly gates will be welcoming me home.”

“But not before St. Peter stops you for an autograph.”

Steve points at him like Bucky just cracked the whole case, his real smile back. “And who would I be to refuse?”

“A downright scoundrel.”

“Which I’m not.”

“Couldn’t be. You’re in Heaven, afterall.”

The corners of Steve’s mouth drop, mirth living on in his eyes, as he leans in until his finger finds the center of Bucky’s chest. “That’s the thing though, Buck, this can’t be Heaven. All those hearts you broke? That filthy tongue and dirty dancing you did?” He clicks his tongue. “Your elevator only goes down, pal.”

Bucky turns his face back into the sea, his neck muscles stretching to make the angle despite the way his body, at some point, has curled back towards Steve. But it feels good too. Cool and sharp and misty like it’s just started to rain. He looks at Steve and it feels good to be seen.

“Together means real,” Bucky says, into the wind.

Nodding his head, Steve’s arm slips around his shoulders, orientating Bucky fully back towards the ocean. It looks alive in its uncalm nature. He pulls Bucky’s side into his own and Bucky lets himself just go.

“There you go, you’re catching on.”

The waves crash too often to breathe to but Steve’s ribs pushing into his sets a decent pace. Bucky’s trying to figure out where exactly the nearest subway station would be without asking his stupid phone when his skin prickles again. The concentration on his own face renders concern on Steve’s and if Bucky were half the devil Steve makes him out to be, he’d play it up.

Instead, his eyes squint at Steve’s before dropping down to his jaw, and back up to blue.

“Well, I am _definitely_ sure that I hated the beard.”

Whether Steve actually pulls him closer or if his arm just tightens due to the laugh matters less than the feeling of warmth that seeps through the layers of their clothing and the sound of Steve cackling as the sky flashes with the first burst of lightning, signalling their dismissal from this place. Bucky relents, sliding out from under the arm as the thunder rolls in a few seconds later, tugging Steve along by his sweatshirt’s drawstrings for a few steps before the idiot starts walking on his own accord.

The rain starts to fall when they’re still a block away from the warehouse, the type of downpour that can’t be sustained for long. It’s over in minutes, a pitter-patter replacing the roar, but they’re both so soaked by the time they get to Steve’s bike that neither seem to see what difference a ride in the drizzle could make.

“Have you home soon,” Steve promises the exact moment he kickstarts the engine, leaving Bucky to wonder if it was meant to be heard.

The wind is cold and wet on his face before he rests his cheek against Steve’s shoulder, taking a page from the other man’s book and pressing in without invitation. So much of Steve’s heat is lost to his thick leather jacket but the smell of him is on it, and Bucky pretends he can feel Steve’s heartbeat where his hands wrap all the way around to rest on Steve’s stomach.

Steve’s a little too quick to announce his desire to shower when they finally get to their door after four stories walked up in silence, though Bucky doesn’t think of it much as he drips his way into Steve’s bedroom. He nearly gets halfway to the dresser containing the drawer that’s been designated as his — the middle of the five, smack in between Steve’s — before noticing the bag on the bed. It’s a bright, obnoxious green, with bold primary colored balloons printed on it and block letters proclaiming, _‘Happy 5th Birthday!’_ Only the 5’s been crossed out and replaced with a grammatically unsound ‘103’ in Steve’s messy scrawl.

Bucky takes a second to mentally confirm that it is, at least possibly, the 10th and another to resign himself to the fact that there’s no way of getting out of whatever this is going to be before he accepts his fate, marching over to where it sits on the bed.

The baseball hat inside is the most emphatic shade of orange that modern man has achieved, the royal blue NY stitched onto the front making it worse somehow. Stuffed in beside it, in place of a card, is simply a piece of paper, wrapped around two tickets to opening day at Citi Field.

_‘We got three options here: These new Mets, ~~the Yankees,~~ or bouncing back and forth to California to see our Dodgers. Assuming you’re not stashing a private jet anywhere, I figured a trip to Queens was my best bet of getting you into the seat next to mine again._

_The crackerjacks were always the highlight, anyways. Sure wasn’t the wins._

_Happy Birthday, Buck.’_

Below the note there’s a sketch of a box of popcorn, a few of Bucky’s preferred peanuts scattered around the base of it, and the whole thing is more than enough to make his heart feel like it’s going a round with his ribs. Which makes the postscript, written in Steve’s worst handwriting as if it were forced-rushed out of him, particularly cruel.

_‘P.S. I’d (attempt to) root for the Yankees for you, if you’d rather. Whatever it takes.’_

Steve doesn’t explicitly comment when he comes out of the bathroom, but Bucky hears the way his footsteps halt when he must see the hat hung on the back of Bucky’s chair at the table, before carrying on to the bedroom.

Though, fifteen minutes later, when he finds the tickets magnetted to the door of the fridge under a post-it proclaiming, _‘Fuck the Yankees’,_ it moves Steve into calling out, “I’d rather not.”

* * *

**_April_ **

The spring had been quick to bring with it a warm front and the world thawed twice as fast as it had frozen. The sky had been fairly generous lately, permitting some breaks in the grey right as the city began to forget that white was a palette option for clouds.

Bucky found that the rain, like so many other things, only weighed so heavily on him once it began to abate.

He bought himself a bright umbrella, yellow in memoriam of the sun that may never fully return. Performing, a few days later, a truly terrible impression of one of Captain America’s chorus girls just to keep Steve laughing when the raincoat he’d brought home for Bucky made him look like a kid after a romp in his father’s closet. Hood coming down over his eyes, Bucky’s show had ended in a fatal run in with their unsuspecting floor lamp. Prioritizing Bucky’s vertical configuration over the light’s, the material of the jacket had crinkled against Steve’s arm as it wrapped around Bucky’s waist, helping to right his balance.

The subsequent crash had been loud but expected, leaving no reason for Bucky to find his face pressed into Steve’s neck — other than the poor excuse he used, him trying to bury his chuckling inside of Steve’s boisterous laugh.

Steve danced now too, Bucky reperfecting his long retired wolf whistle while Steve whisked eggs to the beat of his hips. It wasn’t often a pretty sight but it _was_ always a good one.

Things were starting to feel like they were on the brink of something.

Waking up to a blue skied morning that happened to be a Ruth-grocery day had seemed like a positive sign. Bucky had set his chips on optimism, throwing on one of Steve’s thinner sweatshirts before starting his hour long walk to Park Slope. It was getting prettier as time moved on, the world returning to a sense of _alive_ that couldn’t all be credited to the returning green around them. Like everyone had stopped holding their breath.

Happy to see no poor driver waiting, Bucky let himself into Ruth’s apartment with the only key he owned that didn’t gain him entry to Steve’s apartment, having the intention of organizing the fridge to make room for the half a store that was probably on it’s way.

Though he only gets as far as opening the door before _wrong_ pings off in his brain, halting him in his tracks.

There’s a coat he’s never seen before hanging off the back of the chair he can just barely see. He can hear the TV in the living room, which Ruth never leaves on, and it’s set to one of those 24/7 news stations — something that Ruth can’t stand for more than a heartbeat before completely losing her shit. The normal welcome wagon, Smokey, is nowhere to be seen and he can tell by the light shining through the kitchen doorway that the blinds have been opened in there — the ones Ruth insists on leaving shut because the window lines up perfectly with that, _Nosy no-good Karen McDuffy’s._

Bucky, for the first time in their friendship, is grateful for Ruth’s peach carpet as he silently makes it past the entrance way, moving around the corner of the wall just enough to catch the sight of a woman sitting on the mauve couch.

She’s either ten years his senior or fifty his junior, depending on how you counted. A slender build with no notable muscle mass, wearing clothing tight enough to both restrict mobility and force the wearer to be extremely creative should they desire to conceal a weapon. There’s a barely touched mug of tea on the coffee table in front of her with the bag still in it, clearly over steeped, and Bucky immediately notes that it’s sitting on a coaster. It’s a small sign of care, and proof that she either knows where they’re kept in the decorative box on the far end table or was desperate to look like she did and had spent the time looking for them.

Bucky, for the first time in awhile, decides to take his chances.

“Who are you?”

 _“Fuck!”_ She curses, a jerking spasm sending the cat rocketshipping off of her lap with a mumbled, “Sorry, Smokey.”

A small staring contest begins as she obviously tries to find her answer and settle her heart at the same time.

“I’m Amanda, Ruth’s daughter—”

He’s heard of her. _“A funny girl,”_ Ruth had told him. _“Can’t hold a normal conversation for shit then’ll turn around and refuse to shut up when you want some peace and quiet.”_

It had reminded Bucky of Steve.

“Where is she? Is she okay —?”

“She’s fine! Should of lead with that. A friend of hers from bingo fell this morning and she’s playing guard dog at the hospital. She didn’t have your number so…” trailing off with a wave of her hand.

The tourniquet around his chest loosens, slightly.

“Right, well,” he moves towards the table that a notepad shares with the house phone, over by Ruth’s chair. Amanda doesn’t bat an eye when he has to take out his cell to find his own number before scribbling it down.

“Thank you for being here to tell me. I would have been worried otherwise.”

A laugh sounds off sharply behind him, and he’s glad he’s facing the window so she misses the wince that the suddenness of it creates. Bucky believes that she is who she says she is, he tries to gently remind himself. He _also_ believes he could have her hogtied with the roped curtain pullbacks within minutes if she wasn’t, he layers on, the pen easier to let go of as the muscles in his arm relax.

Though there’s a stab of guilt about the mental image when his gaze makes its way back to her friendly smile, eyes shining as she kids, “You’ve met her. You think I had a choice?”

He nods, telling his face to look sympathetic, emotions still running on a lag as the adrenaline drains from his system. “Just have her let me know when she wants to reschedule.”

The act of walking away finds fingers wrapping around his bicep and his response is too quick of a thing to sort through any type of vetting process. He jerks out of the light hold, twisting around to face her with such a force that he nearly knocks her over when his hands find her shoulders just in time to pull himself out of the panic — arms snapping back to his sides only a second before they’d planned to shove her across the room.

Bucky can feel the distress on his face mirroring hers as their, “I’m sorry”s come out in tandem.

“No, I am.” Amanda resets, angling a few more inches between them in a quiet way, though there’s no fear in her eyes. “I know better than that,” she apologizes, sending Bucky’s thoughts instantly to the women’s dress uniform he’d found in Ruth’s closet the time he’d been putting away the clothes he’d picked up from her dry cleaners.

“I was just going to say, though I’d hardly blame you for telling me to fuck off now, that the family’s decided to have one big Easter dinner this year instead of all of us going our own ways and I’ve been elected as host of the shit show. I don’t know what your story is… but I know my mother would love it if you were there.” Bucky’s heart reanimates at the thought of a house full of unknowns. Strange smells and unfamiliar voices, an unmapped floorplan filled with foreign faces. Though it jumps, in a wholly new way, when she tacks on the innocent offer, “Your boyfriend’s invited too, of course.”

Mouth still open around an excuse he hasn’t come up with yet, it hangs there as his eyes do something odd, like they’re trying to widen and squint at the same time. He can’t imagine what he must look like as the emotions pile on. Nerves from a moment ago still linger even as surprise is already giving way to amusement, not quite strong enough to drown out how pleased he is — or the _huh_ that follows, feeling about 80 years past due.

Though, despite his own plethora of responses, embarrassment is the only one Amanda seems to be handed. “Oh shit, my mouth's already sick of my foot today. I’m — you have to know my mother’s sense of humor —”

It’s Bucky’s turn to bridge the divide, his hand reaching out half the distance between them, “I’m not doing much better,” he huffs out in a chuckle, over what still feels like a revelation, waves of it lapping against him. “It’s nice to meet you, Amanda. I’ve heard mostly good things and a few intriguing bad ones.”

Her hand is soft in his, fingers holding his with a delicate firmness, as if she’s desperately over controlling the strength of it. He squeezes hers a little tighter before he lets go and hopes the, _If you weren’t doing so terribly, I’d only trust you less,_ is translatable into a physical delivery.

“The latters are probably more true than their company,” an attempt at a smile returning to her face as she let’s go of him. “And it’s good to finally meet you too…” she trails off, clearly prompting him with a look, one that sours when his only response is an eyebrow raise. “You can’t expect me to call you _that_.”

But Bucky’s already walking away, much more deliberately this time. Calling over his shoulder, “I’ll let Ruth know about me and _Sugar_ for Easter,” on his way out the door.

He doesn’t run back to the apartment, knowing there’s no one there to run to. But he can’t exactly call it walking when his phone chimes with an answer to his text, _‘Any idea when you’ll be home?’_ with Steve’s, _‘Calling it a day at lunch,’_ that’s timestamp already reads past 11.

He doesn’t fidget once he gets there, either. Simply intending to refold the towels that he had noticed earlier were in a certain state of chaos, he prioritizes reorganization the entire bathroom closet, just to be thorough. After that, the counter may get wiped down a couple of times, but that Steve’s fault for leaving a path of destruction in his pancaked wake. But then — he’d been meaning to fix the couple shelves worth of books they’ve mutually amassed, mostly bought used from tables set up on the sidewalks. Steve’d come home with a small bookcase one day, collecting the paperbacks from their various homes, and had arranged them through a process severely lacking in intelligibility — if it’d even existed at all.

And he’s not pacing when he decides to head out to the fire escape. He’s _not._

Bucky hears the motorcycle coming from at least a block away twenty minutes later, the thing sounding half like a thunderstorm no matter how gently Steve coaxes it. There had to be at least a hundred thousand bikes in their city and yet Bucky can always sift the rumble signature of one particular engine out from the unrelenting urban noise; even now, distracted by the dull roar his mind seemed content leaving set on loop.

It was like a loved one’s footsteps, Bucky figured. Not so different than when Bucky’d open the door to Lucille’s diner, feet still deft from a round with his trainer, and Steve, nose buried in homework and with one bum ear to boot, had always looked up before Bucky could get within ten feet of his booth.

It’s still light enough out for Steve to see him when he rounds the street corner, spring bringing with it a sun that reaffirm its belief in 7PM. Bucky knows he’s been caught, even without the displeasure on Steve’s face that’s somehow visible all the way up on the fourth floor, and so he simply waves with his right hand — lit cigarette still held between his fingers.

He thinks about putting it out. About hiding the rest of the pack in one of the many utensil drawers in the kitchen which Bucky’d bet his good arm hadn’t been opened again since Steve first filled them. Change his shirt and pull on his best expression of innocence and just enjoy the squabble that would surely follow.

Instead, he walks as far as the front door with the sole purpose of undoing the locks, pulling it open just a fraction so Steve doesn’t stand there knocking, and heads back out to where he’ll be found.

Though he groans, forced and loud, when Steve steals the cigarette without even a hello.

“This stuff’ll kill you, you know?” Steve’s tone angry and eyes amused, holding the filter between his thumb and index like it’s a damn cigar.

“No offense to your personal sanctitude — but if a cig’s what finally gets me, I’m prepared to accept that as divine will.”

“Well, celestial intervention will have to get in line,” Steve tells him, all put on like, before the smoke must finally hit him — nose scrunching at the smell as he snubs the cigarette out against the railing.

Bucky knows he’s not quite the epitome of indifference as he deals with dual revelations: That Steve’s hair has already started its migration back to its summer color, golden highlights weaving through the darker blond, and that the dark patches under his eyes, swept across the skin like it’d come from a paintbrush, just makes his eyes look brighter somehow.

They’re both, in the grand scheme, wildly unimportant things. Bucky feels like an entire religion could be based solely on either of them.

“Another soul saved, Rogers,” Bucky says, making a show of inhaling deep on a sigh.

It gets Bucky as much as an eye roll, though he’ll take the smile that’s served as a side — sarcasm and all. The wooden table between them loses the pack of Camels as the carton takes the place between Steve’s fingers, shaking the box at Bucky like a southern preacher wielding a bible before tossing them into the apartment with a sense of finality. As if he figures that Bucky may as well be cemented out here by Steve’s personal gravity.

It doesn’t matter that he’s right.

“Bad day?” Steve asks, allowing concern to dip into tone as he leaves his post at the window when Bucky doesn’t so much as look at it.

“Good one, actually, I think.”

“Well, that explains the frown.”

Reaching into his back pocket, Bucky pulls out a lone cigarette, tucking it behind his ear when the mere appearance of it is enough to summon a grumble from Steve. The real kind that pitches so deep it’s more felt than heard, signed by a scowl and not an eye roll which would brand this one of his oversold playful ones. Which means Bucky’s not surprised when Steve backs into the corner of the railing and lifts himself onto the narrow L of metal that looks downright flimsy under Steve’s mass.

Bucky hates when he does it, as if the fall would more than bruise the guy, and Steve damn well knows it.

“You’re a right ass, you know that, Stevie?”

“Learned from the best, Barnes,” and the bastard hooks his feet around the support bars so he can lean backwards over the nothing, pretending to peer down the street as if there’s a truly spectacular sight to behold. “Now you want to tell me what the chimney impersonation is about? Or you want to keep busting my chops?”

Bucky takes a minute, trying to get his ducks in some kind formation, knowing a row is asking too much. He gives up, almost too quickly, surprising himself with how willing he is to do this without even the veil of presentation.

“I met Ruth’s daughter today. She made it clear that her Ma’s been telling people we’re together.”

Steve’s frame rights itself at that, leaning in a bit over his knees, though Bucky’s not too far gone to notice the true neutrality in his eyes. Clearly more interested in excavating Bucky’s opinion about the topic than forming one of his own.

And God, if Bucky doesn’t blame him for it.

He moves closer in a wandering way, as if he’s being pulled there, and Bucky may as well be with how much more natural it feels — the cold line that the railing draws across his lower back where he leans against it no match for the warmth of Steve’s thigh against his hip.

“That’s not a totally unsound assumption,” Steve says like a question, his hand twitching in Bucky’s peripheral before folding into his other one, leaving Bucky to wonder where it’s original landing pad had been scheduled. “We exist in a pretty tight orbit, Buck. I can’t imagine that too many more of your stories start with something other than, _So Steve and I…,_ than mine begin with, _Bucky and me._ ”

There’s a cringe in Steve’s voice as it grows smaller, staring intently at the stairs at the far end of their poor man’s balcony, as if someone will come barging up and give him a reason not to say, “She’s got a few reasons to make that mistake.”

“Yeah,” and Bucky nearly keeps a straight face when he answers, “like her having a working set of eyes,” which, at least, gets Steve’s back on his.

Eyes that go big and round and not wholly unafraid when Bucky shifts and side steps, orientating himself between Steve’s legs, chin tilting upwards in a move that brings them entirely too close. Even by Steve’s standards.

It’s not his own voice that leaves Bucky, sounding more like it belongs to some wild creature, feral and desperate, begging for scraps when he pleads, “Tell me you trust me.”

Though it’s all Steve’s when his leaves him, grounded and sure and partially indignant, as he replies, “Always, Buck.”

The skin on the back of Steve’s neck is smooth under his palm as he pulls him down, and his hair is soft as Bucky’s fingers spread wide, holding him in place. His slight stubble is scratchier than it first looks, which plays counter to Steve’s lips, shockingly supple despite being chapped. He smells like coffee and sighs like comfort and his heart is beating strong enough to be felt through his sweatshirt where Bucky’s prosthetic cups his ribs.

Steve’s the one who moves first as his patience runs out, mouth opening like it’d been torturous not to. It’s easy to forget the precarious setting, Bucky pressing in, up on his toes though he’d never admit it, until their chests rest against each others’ and he can feel the fire burning between them. Their tongues meet at the intersection of eager and clumsy and Bucky tells himself not to laugh at the idea of explaining to his fledgeling self a world in which Steve fucking Rogers is less out of practice than he is at kissing.

It feels like a long time coming when Steve’s breath hitches against his cheek, the hem of his shirt giving way to Bucky’s hand, the cool metal of his fingers finding a home against the heated flesh of Steve’s lower back. It tastes like something Bucky’s dreamed of before, like a melody of almost familiar flavors that create an inviting banquet. It sounds like a promise when Bucky whines, lip caught between Steve’s teeth in open protest to Bucky inching away.

And it looks like a damn fucking vision, Steve’s mouth kissed red and his pupils blown wide, knuckles gripped white on the railing beside him as if it’ll save him.

“You kiss me like you’ve been holding back for awhile, Stevie,” and it may have slapped like the joke Bucky wants it to be instead of caressing like an adoration soaked ovation that it actually is, if he hadn’t murmured it into the side of Steve’s face, nosing his temple like an attention deprived cat.

Though Steve’s, “Not anymore,” fairs no better as he slides off his perch and into Bucky’s personal space, aligning them in a way that feels like both heaven and hell.

“Your overconfidence will be the death of us both.”

Hands, rough with use, find Bucky’s face and hold it where Steve wants it — close and inclined and angled slightly to the right as if the will of God himself was keeping the space between their mouths in existence. Thumbs sweep under Bucky’s eyes, a gentle request to meet Steve’s blue, and he relents the sight of Steve’s soft smile, though he’s sure his expression makes no assurances about how long he plans on granting such a thing.

“Just admit that you love me,” Steve almost echoes Bucky’s earlier plea.

To which he steals Steve’s answer, “Always,” as he inches in, smiling against Steve’s huff of indignation when he pulls away after only a ghost of touch. “Under one condition.”

Bucky’s expecting a _Fuck you_ or a _Do you even notice when you’re ahead?_ which makes Steve’s, “Anything,” all the more dangerous.

And Bucky’d feel bad for spoiling the whole thing, if the puffing breath of Steve’s laughter didn’t feel so right against his skin after whispering, “We never, ever, tell Ruth that this happened,” against the corner of Steve’s full grin.

* * *

** _The Beginning_ **

They go a week early, wanting to be there without the company of a crowd, knowing that going when there’ll be a margin of peace means a hell of a lot more than a date on the calendar. Holy Cross is first on their list, Bucky laying the yellow roses he bought across the ridge of his grandmother’s tombstone. He has no idea what they symbolize, only that the color reminded him of the horribly ugly afghan she’d crocheted for his bed as a kid and how warm it had kept him when the heat was out.

Somewhere in a row nearby lays Bucky’s mother, laid to rest a couple of decades ago, though it remains a fresh wound on him. They don’t look for her — the very idea of her having a grave still one he’s unprepared to deal with. He spares a look in the direction he thinks she’s in before they leave, towards one of the trees that’s layered in shades of green, and sends a thought her way that he’ll do his best to be back soon.

He figures she’d understand.

From there they head straight up to Cypress to visit Sarah. Bucky’s the one to carry over the plant Steve picked out just the day before — a pot of sky blue flowers, starbursts in shape, that would have looked at home against the shade of her eyes, judging by how well they compliment her son’s.

It’s a test of a moment when they both realize, at the same time, that neither had thought to buy some kind of shovel to aid the process they’d come here to achieve, and the humor of it hangs in the air — thick with failing denial. Bucky’s nearly bitten his tongue through by the time he dares to look at Steve, only to find the bastard’s own face ready to burst as a smile consumes it.

Steve murmurs a, “Thanks,” in response when Bucky waves with his prosthetic, wiggling the metal fingers slightly as an offer, and the permission to finally laugh at their combined stupidity is payment enough. As Bucky digs a small hole with his hands the earth works under his nails in a way that feels almost tranquil.

Roots buried and dirt packed, Bucky finds Steve on the other side of the stone slab, back leaning against it as he looks down the hill at nothing at all. He’d worry, maybe, force himself to find something decent to say, if Steve’s hand hadn’t weaseled its way into his own before his ass ever found ground.

Then, he waits.

Bucky’s sense of time is _still_ a force to be reckoned with, though it’s getting blurrier around the edges, more prone to going wonky when he lets his mind wander. The way Steve’s breathing rolls in time with the birdsong, how his tired eyes trace Bucky’s profile like it’s something to remember, the feeling of his own palm working towards a damp-sweat where it’s held against the inferno of Steve’s skin — they’re enough to make him lose hours.

And then there’s the moment that Steve finds his tongue, smirk clicking into place right before he says, “She knew, you know,” punctuated with a squeeze of his fingers.

Surprise is what hits Bucky first, of course, which is swept cleanly under the rug by the flood of memories he has of Sarah. Sharp and gentle and far too bright not to see what you hung in front of her face. Though the _Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you say something?_ must read like a manuscript all over his expression as Steve slowly shakes his head, loosening his expression to something softer.

“It was one of the million times you’d spent the night, running out the front with your shirt still unbuttoned, slice of toast hanging out of your mouth as you thanked Mom like she’d ever let you leave hungry. I — I must have stared at the back of that door for ten minutes before she broke, sliding my plate in front of me with a, _‘You know, if you want something — it helps to ask for it.’_ ” Their laughs match, more hiccups than anything else, Steve’s crumbling into a grin that seems to seep into his muscles, untying the knots in his neck and shoulders as he slumps towards Bucky. “She was so smug.”

“Mmmph. At least we know the definitive source of your subtle allergy.”

“Hey!” Steve barks, his elbow too cramped in the nothing between them to knock Bucky’s side the way that he clearly wants to. “I can be subtle.”

“In comparison to what? A freight train?”

“You think so, Barnes?” Steve snaps, making moves to get to his feet. Threatening, “Maybe I’ll just _subtly_ leave you here to foot it back,” even as he pulls Bucky to stand by the hand he refuses to let go of.

“Revealing your masterplan to the world before executing it? Very subtle.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Steve relents once they’re in motion, fingers releasing Bucky’s only for the arm attached to them to wrap around his shoulders, locking him in place by Steve’s side.

He feels real in a way that had been an impossibility not too long ago. Safe and worried for, as eyes that read like sonnets watch him when Bucky pulls Steve into a pause, taking in Sarah’s name and the simple epitaph that was as close as any could be to doing her justice.

_Kind person. Honest friend. Loving mother._

“She loved you too, Buck. As if all her fussing hadn’t made her obvious,” his voice is gentle even as the pitch seems to sink till it’s firm like concrete, sure and steadfast. Fingers working into Bucky’s hair, Steve tugs on it slightly, fishing for a smile as he leans closer. “ _Almost_ as much as I did, even.”

Everything about Steve’s body radiates what makes up the here and now, elation and acceptance with no shortage of pain or joy. It feels like the sun. Big and nearly too much and never enough all rolled into one boiling point in Bucky’s eternally intricate sky.

Living has been learning to accept that things will never be less complicated.

Things were finally starting to feel better for it.

He gives himself a moment to think, to let the right thing find him for once, and Bucky means it when he says, “I’m happy we’re here.”

There’s no answer drafted from Steve as a kiss finds Bucky’s temple and Bucky has no need for one as they both seem to decide that they’re ready to go without having to spell out a plan. Steve’s arm falls from around him when their hips knock together, allowing Bucky the span of a foot between them, though he seems just as pleased to have him back once they're on the bike — pulling Bucky’s hands around his waist when they aim for his flank.

“Anywhere in particular?”

And Bucky can feel the chuckle from deep in Steve’s stomach when his head simply rocks between Steve’s shoulder blades. Digging out when Steve seems intent on some form of response, “Just somewhere close.”

Because anywhere’s always been fine by him, so long as it’s with Steve in Brooklyn.

**Author's Note:**

> First posted Stucky fic! Why does this feel more like opening a can of worms than anything else?
> 
> A huge whopping thanks to Mod Rae for keeping this thing together when I can't even imagine how many moving parts there were to figure out. You're a sweetheart and a saint and we definitely don't deserve you.
> 
> To my good friend Page who ~~got me into this stupid ship to begin with~~ pretended to believe me when I said this would be under 10k and my personal demon Alice who threatened my life when I told her the exact same thing. This wouldn't exist without either of you. And a tip of the hat to Caitlyn who continues to make me lie to you people about being able to spell literally anything. I appreciate you fuckers more than you know.
> 
> Until next time you can find me on my main tumblr at [GrumpyBones](https://grumpybonesey.tumblr.com/)


End file.
